Scribbles and Sundries

“Go-od morning, caller, what can I do for you at this early, early hour?”

It was almost three AM and his midnight coffee was wearing off fast, but Hizashi tried to keep the pep up in his voice for all the late shift workers, insomniacs, and other assorted night owls who tuned in and kept his ratings up.

“Heyo!” Hizashi held back a groan and he recognized Haru’s voice on the other end of the line. “I was hoping maybe I could pick your brain about a problem I’ve been having with a certain brother of mine.”

“I usually don’t give out advice until Friday night’s show,” Hizashi said with a meaningful sharpness, “but I’ll give it a whirl. What’s up?”

“I need some advice on how to get my brother to stop being such a mope-ass and come shittalk his ex over drinks,” Haru said brightly.

Hizashi pursed his lips, rolling his eyes. “Sounds like a real dilemma,” he intoned. “Are you sure he’s moping, or is he maybe just not interested in going out?”

“You don’t know my brother,” Haru replied, her grin obvious in her voice. Hizashi scoffed, clapping a hand over his mouth just in time to make it sound like a blip of static. “He’s usually the first one in line to get white girl schwasted and sing karaoke to get over some dipshit he’s dated, but so far every time I’ve told him he should come out with me and some friends from work he keeps ghosting me.” She paused, then added, “And it was kind of my fault he went out with this particular dipshit, so it’s on me to make up for encouraging bad life choices, y’know?”

“By encouraging other bad life choices?” Hizashi asked, raising an eyebrow even though she couldn’t see.

“By dragging him out of his rut before he fossilizes,” Haru corrected.

Hizashi rolled his eyes, grinning in spite of himself. “I mean, it sounds to me like you have the right idea. Maybe try asking one more time,” he said.

“I dunno, he can be pretty stubborn,” Haru said, fully teasing now.

“Thirteenth time’s the charm, right? The worst he can do is say no,” Hizashi said, texting Okay, okay, message received. Where and when? to Haru as he spoke.

“We’ll see. Thanks, dude. Hey, while I’ve got you on the line, can I make a quick song request?”

“Lay it on me.”

“‘Heroes’, by Bowie,” Haru said, her voice turning a little soft as she said it. Hizashi smiled to himself.

“A favorite of his?” he said.

“Yeah. I think if he’s listening it might cheer him up.”

“Sure thing, caller. I wouldn’t worry about things too much. Sounds like you know your brother pretty well.”

The family joke was that Haruko and Hizashi were actually twins, he’d just gotten lost and showed up three years late. It might as well have been true; both were tall and quick like their father and had their mother’s blond hair and sharp tongue. Haru loved Hinako with all the closeness and affection you had for someone you had shared a uterus with, but there was no denying Hizashi had been her best friend from birth. They’d been attached at the hip basically from the moment toddler Haru had been told she had a new baby brother on the way. So when Hizashi called her in a breathless whirl to say his results letter from UA High had come in the mail, Haru had dropped everything and rushed home.

Hizashi was just about the smartest person Haru had ever met, with amazing recall for the tiniest details and a near-infinite energy for learning new things. Applying that energy, however, had been his downfall from the off; all the brains and ambition in the world didn’t make up for his attention issues, Quirk mishaps, and inability to connect socially with his classmates. He’d spent most of upper elementary school floundering academically, skating by at the bare minimum level to pass in no particular direction.

Visiting Haru at UA during her first year culture festival, however, had been a revelation for him. Seeing the school and all it had to offer someone with a powerful Quirk and a brilliant mind had finally been a tangible goal Hizashi could focus on. He’d immediately buckled down, applying himself to his schoolwork in a way Haru had never seen from him before and he never looked back. He’d blazed through middle school at the top of his class, easily securing his place in the UA entrance exam. No one had any doubts he had blown the written exam out of the water, but it was the practical application exam that really counted when you wanted to be a hero.

And so now here the two of them were, sitting on Hizashi’s bedroom floor with the unopened results envelope between them. Hizashi was vibrating in place, his leg thumping under him and making the rest of him shake. Haru kept looking from him to the envelope and back again, the palpable waves of excitement and nerves rolling off of him making her just as keyed up as he was.

“Want me to do it?” Haru asked, half-teasing.

Hizashi shook his head, still bouncing. “I got it, I just…” he trailed off, the first spots of self-doubt starting to creep in around the edges of his mood. Haru decided to cut that off at the pass, picking the envelope up by one end and holding the other out to Hizashi like it was a wishbone.

“Count of three,” she said. Hizashi nodded, taking his end in both trembling hands. “Okay. One--”

There was a sharp sound of ripping paper as Hizashi jumped the gun and pulled back his end. A single sheet of UA letterhead stationery dropped onto the floor. Haru’s spirit sank as she thought of the thick sheaf of paperwork and the holo-disc acceptance message that had come for her three years ago. Her hope dwindled down to embers as Hizashi shook the letter open. His anxious excitement went out like a snuffed candle, expression falling from eager anticipation to confusion to a blank emptiness as his eyes scanned down the page. His hands were shaking again, clenched around the edges of the paper. His breathing sharpened suddenly into the quick, barking wheezes that usually heralded an asthma attack.

“Hizashi?” Haru asked tentatively, reaching out toward him. Hizashi pulled away violently, snapping to his feet. He looked down at her, breath hissing between clenched teeth. His eyes were wild and unfocused; he looked very young and very lost. “Oh god, Zash,” Haru breathed.

Before she could do anything else, Hizashi bolted from the room and out of the apartment at a breakneck sprint. Haru followed after him as fast as she could, calling after him as she heard him thundering down the building’s staircase. She finally caught him up to him as they both exploded out the building’s side door and onto the street. Hizashi staggered a few steps, barely getting his feet under himself before the next step came. He crumpled forward, back arched into a hard C shape and his shoulders heaving. Haru’s eyes went wide and she clapped her hands over her ears just before Hizashi let out a raw, ear-splitting scream loud enough to make the street jump under their feet. All of the streetlamps flickered and flared as the shockwave hit them and the evening came alive with the cacophonous sound of every car alarm in a two-block radius going off. Hizashi sucked in a hard breath that escaped him as a croaking hiccup as his legs finally gave out. He collapsed onto his knees in the middle of the street, hands buried in his hair as he let out raw, halting sobs. Haru ran to him, wrapping her arms around him and letting Hizashi cling to her and howl into her shoulder. He’d dropped the letter when he fell, and in the dim light from the resetting streetlamps Haru could just make out what it said.

Dear Mr. Hizashi Yamada,

Thank you for your interest in UA High School’s Hero Course academic program. We appreciate your diligence and dedication to completing all required steps of our application and evaluation process.

However, during the course of the practical application exam, an occurrence of your Quirk usage resulted in a one-block section of our video monitoring system being taken offline for a period of approximately 92.8 seconds. Due to a lack of additional coverage angles in this area, we are unable to validate the nine (9) exam points that were registered to you during this outage period.

Unfortunately unvalidated points are not able to be applied to your exam score, bringing your total practical exam score below our passing threshold level.

We thank you again for your interest, and wish you the best of luck in all future endeavors.

The letter was signed by Principal Nedzu and a slew of other names that Haru vaguely recognized as being on the admittance board staff.

Bastards, Haru thought savagely, pulling Hizashi even closer as she stroked his hair. They had no right to dock him that many points over their own carelessness. If that was the kind of regard they wanted to show applicants, then to hell with them anyway. It would serve them right when Hizashi applied somewhere else and became a top-ranked hero all on his own.

But Hizashi didn’t apply anywhere else. UA had been his first and only choice; it had been his dream. Now the dream was gone, taking all of Hizashi’s spark with it. He fell back into his old habits, doing the bare minimum to not fail his classes while his grades toppled around him. Any time not spent sleepwalking through his schoolwork or being nudged into the bare basics of self-care was spent shut up in his room in silence, eyes focused on nothing. Not even their parents’ offer for Hizashi to get a fresh start by moving in with their maternal grandparents and finishing his schooling in America had gotten any kind of reaction out of him. Hizashi had just shrugged, giving a hollow-eyed monosyllable of agreement before asking to be excused so that he could go pack.

The day after his middle school graduation Haru had given her brother the tightest hug she could muster and told him to call her the second he needed anything. Hizashi didn’t respond, turning and trudging listlessly away from her onto the plane.

When he’d accepted Haru’s invitation to “drinks with friends from work”, Hizashi had unfortunately forgotten that Haru had two jobs. Instead of the gaggle of yoga instructors and personal trainers he’d been expecting to meet up with, Hizashi rounded the corner to see his sister standing amid a group of her fellow pro heroes in their civilian finest. He half-recognized most of them by build or face shape, but there was no mistaking the broad frame and wild shock of blue-white hair of the man currently laughing over something on Haru’s phone: the number six pro hero and UA teacher, Loud Cloud himself. A shrill alarm of self-preservation went off in Hizashi’s brain, screaming for him to beg off and leave before things got any worse. Before he could do more than panic and stare, however, Haru spotted him and waved him over.

“Zash! You made it!” Haru said, beaming. Hizashi smiled back weakly and waved as he trudged over, trying very hard to not make eye contact with anyone but her.

“Sorry I’m late,” Hizashi muttered.

Haru waved a hand dismissively. “We only just got here,” she said. “Everyone, this my brother Hizashi. Zash, this is everyone.” She rattled off a laundry list of names that came and went before Hizashi could put them to memory. What did catch his attention, however, was the fact that his presence brought the group to an even number of people. His brilliant mess of a sister had invited him, a multi-platinum wanted criminal, on a group date with some of the most powerful and respected pro heroes in the city. Hizashi bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep in the snort of helpless laughter caught in the back of his throat.

The ploy seemed to become even more obvious as Haru shooed Hizashi down to the opposite end of the table from herself, making sure he sat down across from Loud Cloud (real name Something-Or-Other Shirakumo). Hizashi could feel a nervous sweat beginning to gather on the back of his neck as Shirakumo cheerfully poured him a drink. There was no reason for him to freak out, Hizashi reminded himself sternly. No one at this table save for Haru had any idea he dabbled on the wrong side of the tracks, and not even she knew the half of it. All he had to do was put on a good face and avoid getting “white girl schwasted”, as Haru had so eloquently put it, and he’d be fine.

“So, what do you do, Hizashi?” Shirakumo asked, making Hizashi jump.

“He’s a self-made man!” Haru piped up from the far end of the table. Hizashi rolled his eyes at her.

“Uh, radio,” Hizashi answered for himself. “I’m the operations manager over at Asahi Radio, and I run the overnight show every couple of weeks if they need something to fill the slot.”

“That’s why you sound so familiar!” Shirakumo said, snapping his fingers triumphantly. “‘Put Your Hands Up Radio’, right? We have it on all the time in the office when we have to pull graveyard shifts.”

Hizashi grinned in spite of himself, a flattered heat in his cheeks. “My sister has a way of inflicting her bad taste on other people,” he joked apologetically. Haru blew a loud raspberry at him but Shirakumo just laughed, shaking his head.

“Nah, we’ve been listening for years, even before Haru hired on. It’s a good pep-up when it’s two AM and you’re still chained to your desk.”

Hizashi couldn’t help preening a little. “Glad to be of service,” he said, bowing.

“How long have you been in radio?” Shirakumo asked.

“Uh.” Hizashi paused, trying to do math despite the ebbing panic scrambling his concentration. “Twelve years now?” he said, almost sure that was right. “I did an internship right after I graduated high school and then I ended up just kind of sticking around. They haven’t gotten rid of me yet, so I must be doing something right.”

The Hizashi that stepped back off the plane after three years in Boston wasn’t the same one who had left, but Haru was glad to see the change. Hizashi saw her waiting inside the doors to the baggage claim and ran full-tilt through the crowd to scoop her up in a tight bearhug.

“Gah! Break my ribs, why dontcha?” Haru laughed, hugging him just as tightly. Hizashi had sprouted up while he was abroad, towering over her by at least three inches even without the tall fluff of hair gelled up over his forehead. He was still the same grinning dork she remembered, though, from his chunky hipster glasses to the way he immediately pulled her into a second hug just as tight as the first.

“I missed you so much, though!” Hizashi protested. Haru grinned, squeezing him back.

“Yeah, me too,” she said. “Now go get your bags and let’s hop-to,” she added. “I’m not the only one who missed your ugly mug.”

Hizashi chattered the entire cab ride back to their parents’ apartment, barely containing his excitement at being home. Haru kept thinking back to the sallow-faced, wilted scrap of a boy she’d seen off at the airport compared to the sunny freckled giant on the seat beside her and had to scrub the corners of her eyes dry before she made a fool of herself. Hizashi made no such attempt to contain his emotions as he walked into the surprise welcome back party everyone had put together for him. They buried him in affection, glad to finally have their family whole again. The gap in their ranks had almost fallen to the back of their collective minds in his absence but having Hizashi back made his absence sharper in retrospect. Hizashi spent the night regaling them with stories about American high school life that sounded to Haru like something out of a grimdark John Hughes movie but he swore up and down weren’t exaggerations. He kept in motion as he spoke, buzzing around the room to emphasize his points with some kind of elaborating miming or clearing away dishes or just pacing the room in the flurry of enthusiasm he always had when he was entertaining an audience.

Late into a story about the hellish test of fortitude that a square dancing unit in gym class was when you were in the middle of a growth spurt, Hizashi was interrupted mid-thought by the phone ringing.

“I got it, Ma,” Hizashi said, waving for their mother to sit back down as he headed off to grab the handset in the hall. “Yah-mada residence!” Haru heard him beaming into the phone. She caught their mother’s eye and they shared a snort and knowing grin. He’d been back all of a few hours and was already running full steam ahead, Haru thought, shaking her head. She could pretend to be disapproving, but there was nothing that made her feel more relieved than knowing he knew he was finally home.

She expected him to come loping back down the hallway after a few minutes after confirming to their grandparents he was safe, but the moment of absence began to stretch out uncomfortably. Haru got up and followed him, a sudden sinking in her chest at the thought that Hizashi’s cheer had been for their sake and he’d taken the excuse to break off and be upset on his own.

“Hey, didja fall in?” Haru asked, trying to keep her voice light as she poked her head around the corner. Hizashi visibly jumped at the sound, fumbling the phone’s handset before slamming it down into the cradle.

“Sorry, what?” Hizashi asked breathlessly. He looked very pale all of a sudden and his eyes had a faraway, glassy sheen to them.

“Everything okay, Zash?” Haru asked, the clench in her chest tightening another notch.

“Huh? Oh! Oh, yeah, I’m good. Wrong number,” Hizashi said, gesturing vaguely at the phone. “Got kind of shitty when I told them. Some people, right?” He gave a slightly unsteady scoff, rolling his eyes. Haru raised an eyebrow.

“Uh...huh,” she said slowly. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Totally,” Hizashi said, brushing past her back towards the living room. “Anyway, where was I?”

The odd hiccup in Hizashi’s mood kept eating at Haru over the next few days, all the more because of how otherwise normal he was acting. He spent his days out of the apartment, nominally looking for a job now that he was settled, and his evenings scouring want ads during commercial breaks while they all watched television together. He was buoyant and excitable, especially the night he came home exclaiming that the webcast talk show he’d spent the last few years running as a hobby had landed him a paid internship at one of the downtown radio stations. Everything was smiles and normality with occasional bouts of especially good news, and that more than anything was putting her on edge.

Hizashi begged off to bed early one night, claiming he wanted to get to sleep early before his internship started the next day. Slowly the living room emptied without Hizashi’s inexhaustible energy to keep them awake. Haru dozed off on the sofa in the middle of texting one of her friends, too lazy to drag herself to bed.

She was shaken awake by the sound of her keychains clattering together as someone took them off the hook by the door. Haru peered blearily over the back of the sofa just in time to see the back of Hizashi’s head disappearing out the front door. Her heart sank as she checked the time: two-thirty AM. A tired, scared part of her wanted to believe it was just nerves keeping him up and he was going out for some air. The look on his face after the phone call at his party came to the front of her mind, though, and wouldn’t let her put it aside.

Haru followed Hizashi at tailing distance, having to quickly duck behind whatever cover she could find as he got turned around and had to retrace his steps. Another nail in the coffin for this being a quick trip out for some fresh air; between his terrible sense of direction and having been gone for three years Hizashi would know better than to wander around unfamiliar territory in the middle of the night. Unless of course, Haru thought as she crouched behind a dumpster and watched her brother knock on the employee entrance of Hanajima’s Garden Supply and Boutique Florist, he had planned to meet with someone.

She tiptoed forward as Hizashi was waved in and the heavy steel door shut behind him. Her heart rattled painfully in her throat as she did her best to peek through the slats of the vent in the door. Haru only caught a flash of Hizashi’s hair and the back of his neon blue windbreaker as he disappeared deeper into the shop. Haru chewed her lip, a fist of panic threatening to squeeze the breath out of her. She wished she’d been thinking clearly enough in the moment to grab her phone on her way out. The smart thing to do would be to go find a patrolling hero or a police station or at least a payphone nearby, but the thought of leaving Hizashi alone to fend for himself if something went wrong made her stomach seize. No one on the up-and-up had meetings in the dimly-lit backroom of a flower shop at three in the morning, that much she was sure about.

Haru shifted from foot to foot, mind racing at a hundred miles an hour but getting nowhere. Hizashi was going to have to tell her the truth now; he couldn’t keep up his facade when he’d been caught red-handed doing something this level of sketchy. She would just have to stick around and find out what the hell he was thinking and the two of them would figure out where to go from here. Haru slowly backed away from the door in case someone inside the shop was watching and crouched down with her back against the shop’s wall to watch the door and wait for Hizashi. She tried to stay calm but as the minutes stretched into decades she had more and more time to stew on the audacity of it all. She and Hizashi had been best friends since they were babies, they’d never kept secrets from one another. It was against every tennant of the unspoken code of trust the two of them held sacred. Now here he was, barely a month back from doing god knew what in America and sneaking around behind everyone’s back. Behind her back. By the time Hizashi stumbled back out the employee door, pushed over the threshold by someone inside, Haru’s temper had risen to a barely-restrained boil.

Hizashi sighed, sniffling hard and scrubbing under his nose with the back of his wrist as he turned to walk away. Haru followed him as he reached the sidewalk, a whole slew of new terrible thoughts sprouting in her mind in the wake of that gesture. Hizashi’s mind seemed thoroughly elsewhere as he walked, not reacting to the sound of Haru’s footsteps behind him until her patience snapped and she spoke.

“Funny,” Haru said, relishing the way Hizashi jumped and staggered around to face her, “this doesn’t look like being in bed by ten because you have work in the morning.” She crossed her arms and channeled her mother’s most intimidating “all right, start talking” eyebrow raise.

“H-Haru--you--what are you doing here?” Hizashi spluttered. His eyes were wide and scared and there was a dribble of blood trickling down from his nose. Concern sparked in Haru’s chest, but she did her best to push it aside for the moment. She could afford to be worried about him once she knew what she was worried about.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Haru said tartly.

“N-Nothing, it’s just. It’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” Hizashi rambled, using a lot of words to say absolutely nothing. Haru bristled.

“Hizashi Yamada, I swear to god--” she began.

“Haru, seriously!” Hizashi snapped, cutting her off. His voice cracked high at the end the way it always did when he was trying to keep himself from crying. Haru realized he was shaking all over, pale and wild-eyed in a way that was horribly familiar.

“Hizashi, is this about that phone call?” Haru asked, her tone softened but no less stern. Hizashi flinched, then nodded hesitantly. He dropped his eyes away from hers, arms wrapping protectively across his chest.

“Mr. Hanajima called. He. He thought I was Dad, and.” Hizashi broke off, shaking his head. “Mom and Dad were in trouble, but I took care of it. Just forget it, okay?” His voice was shaky and pleading.

“What do you mean, they’re in trouble?” Haru asked, a cold chill running up her spine.

“Were, they were in trouble, but it’s fine now, I swear!” Hizashi said. He tried to smile reassuringly but the faltering expression just made him look more scared. “They just. They owed Mr. Hanajima some money, and they were late on payments. He said he was going to have to find a new way to enforce the deadlines if they didn’t pay it all off soon, so I told him I’d take care of it instead.”

“What? Why?” Haru asked. Her tone came out too sharp again and Hizashi flinched away from her again.

“On the phone he kept talking about how it was irresponsible to borrow so much money without a good way to pay it back,” Hizashi mumbled slowly. “And how the university board and Mom’s promoters would want to know about how reckless their employees were being. And how the hero certification board would want to think twice about hiring out someone with parents who were so financially unsound, and the medical board and the admittance committees for all the high schools in town and...and the whole stupid thing is my fault anyway, so I handled it, okay? It’s no big deal.” He pushed the last part out in one rapid, shaky breath.

Haru stared at him. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing; her parents had never mentioned anything about money problems to her, least of all the kind that required the help of some racketeering florist. “You lost me,” Haru admitted flatly. “I mean, I get why you’re worried, but. Mom and Dad are grown adults, Zash. If they felt like they were in that kind of trouble they would tell us--me especially! I literally went to school for this kind of thing. How is any of this your fault?”

“What do you think they needed a whole lot of quick money for, Haru?” Hizashi asked, a snippy tone of exasperation coming into his voice. “For their adult daughters who have their own jobs and pay their own bills? For--For the preteens who are acing every one of their classes and are gonna have the world on a string after they graduate? Or maybe it was for their fuckup middle child who decided he needed to have a breakdown over not getting something he wanted!” His voice rose to a frantic, angry shout, echoing loudly enough in the early-morning silence to rattle the glass in a nearby shop window. Hizashi clapped his hands over his mouth, shoulders heaving as he breathed.

The last flicker of anger went out of Haru as she watched him struggle against the impulse to scream. She wondered how long that had been boiling under his skin, waiting to emerge. “Zash, that wasn’t your fault either,” she said gently. “They made a stupid, bad decision and you got screwed. You’re allowed to be upset over something like that.”

Hizashi scoffed, hands dropping to wrap around himself again. “Two hundred forty million yen’s worth of upset?” he asked hollowly.

Haru’s eyes went wide. “What?”

“It costs a lot of money to raise your kid from six thousand miles away,” Hizashi said bitterly. He shook his head hard and looked back up at Haru. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said. “I already said I’d take care of it. It’ll take a while to pay off, but I’ve got plenty of time. It’s fine.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself and Haru at the same time. Neither of them were buying it if the current mood was anything to go by.

“Zash,” Haru said slowly. She tried to think of a way to phrase her objection as something softer than “don’t be stupid”. “What are you supposed to do if they decide that paying them back isn’t good enough?” she said finally. “Just keep working for them until you die?”

“I. I dunno,” Hizashi mumbled, shrugging. “I guess I’ll figure that out if it happens. Right now all that matters is making things right for Mom and Dad, and I did that.”

Haru sighed. An exhausted, selfish part of her wished it had been something more straightforwardly wrong that had them hashing things out in the early morning air. Something she could feel justified in yelling at him about, at the very least. “You aren’t going to tell them about this, are you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

Hizashi shook his head firmly. “No,” he said. He hesitated, then asked, “Are you?”

Haru snorted out an exasperated laugh. “What good would it do?” she asked, throwing her hands up. “They didn’t want to tell us, what good is it going to do to let them know we know by getting them wrapped up in it all over again? I’d run your dumb ass to the cops, but at this point they’re probably in Hanajima’s pocket already.” She sighed, rubbing her forehead. “Just. I want you to promise me something, okay? I’ll keep out of it for now, but you have to swear to me the millisecond that this gets too big for you to handle on your own, you let me help you, got it?”

Hizashi looked uncomfortable giving his word on something like that, but Haru didn’t relent. She set her jaw and held out her hand with the pinky extended. He hesitated a long moment, then linked his pinky with hers and they shook on it.

“I promise,” Hizashi said quietly, meeting her eye again. Haru nodded authoritatively, shaking one last time before letting go.

“Okay,” she said, letting her breath out slowly. “That internship you told us about. Is that a for-real thing, or was it a cover for this whole...thing?” Haru asked, waving a vague hand to encompass the tangled mess the night had turned into

One corner of Hizashi’s mouth quirked up and he brightened very slightly. “Yeah, it’s real. It really does start tomorrow, too. Er, today, I guess,” he corrected himself awkwardly.

Haru nodded. “We should get home, then,” she said, turning him the right direction down the sidewalk. She took his hand as they walked, relieved that his hand was shaking just as much as hers.

Haru hated feeling like she couldn’t trust Hizashi’s word that his internship was real, but that was exactly why she was in the front lobby of Asahi Radio at lunchtime the next day. The receptionist told her it would be a few minutes until the interns were free, so Haru wandered off to kill time reading the wall of award plaques they had on display.

Haru heard her brother’s cackling laughter trickling down the hallway even before she saw him. Hizashi came strolling up to the front with a whole entourage of kids around his age, arms full of boxes and in the middle of one of his many stories about living in America. He beamed as he saw her, almost dropping his boxes as he tried to wave. The interns went in a side room with their load and were dismissed by the woman overseeing the work-study. Haru grinned in a combination of relief and genuine pride as Hizashi jogged over.

“Hey, kid,” Haru said, reaching out and ruffling his hair. “Thought I’d take you out to lunch to celebrate your first day. Pick something expensive, it’s a special occasion.”

“You’re gonna regret that,” Hizashi teased brightly as they walked out the front door. Haru privately doubted that was the part of all this that she’d come to regret.

“Have you guys been having to pull a lot of all-nighters?” Hizashi asked, trying his best to make the question sound casual.

Shirakumo frowned slightly, nodding. “I wish we weren’t,” he said, “but it seems like every time we get a handle on a case we’re working on, three more complications crop up overnight.”

“Which is the boss’s nice way of saying if any of us meet Mockingbird face-to-face, we’re going to kick his teeth in,” the woman sitting on Shirakumo’s left said, jostling Shirakumo with her elbow.

It took more self-control than Hizashi thought he possessed three beers into the night to hold back a bark of laughter at that. He waited until he thought he could speak without giggling, then asked, “He’s still active? All of our news contacts are at loose ends trying to come up with anything new about him.”

“That is a whole-ass mood,” the woman said, nodding. “Hey. Haru says you’re pretty brainy,” she added, pointing speculatively at Hizashi.

“I guess so,” Hizashi said with a shrug.

“Maybe you can riddle this out for us,” the woman said. “Say you were tracking a criminal, goes by a code name that rhymes with ‘blocking herd’. The guy by definition is a lone operator, and he follows a pretty standard pattern of ebb and flow in what he does. Then one day he falls off the face of the planet. Not a peep out of him. Well, other than a couple tangents that people blame him for, but you can’t pin ‘em on him, so they don’t really count. Then right in the middle of that, suddenly there’s a whole new face who shows up and causes a scene, supposedly on the first guy’s behalf. But there’s still no sign of the guy himself in any of it. What say you?”

“I would say maybe you need to switch to water for a while, Misa,” Shirakumo said meaningfully, tugging the half-full glass of beer out of her hand and swapping it for a glass of water. Misa frowned at him, but chugged it obediently. “None of that constitutes an official statement from the agency or anyone affiliated with it, by the way,” Shirakumo added to Hizashi. He was still smiling, but there was a definite “or else” hiding in his tone.

Hizashi nodded dismissively. “Obviously. Just a hypothetical over drinks with friends,” he agreed. He took a long sip of his drink, pretending to be thinking the situation over. The fact that Aizawa was now officially implicated caused a sharp squirm of guilt in his gut, but he did his best to ignore it.

“I see what you mean about one problem being solved causing three more in the process,” he said finally with a thoughtful nod. “Assuming the new face is legitimate, that opens up a couple options. It could mean your main suspect is getting cocky and adding to his ranks, or he’s getting scared and wants some insurance that he won’t go down alone,“ he continued, ticking the options off on his fingers. “Either way, you at least have your reason for him staying quiet.”

“How so?” Shirakumo asked. He was looking more closely at Hizashi now, an impressed interest clear in his expression.

“Why would he risk showing his face if his pets are walking around doing his wet work?” Hizashi explained, wondering too late if that skirted too close to the truth. “Cockiness leads to laziness, fear leads to paranoia,” he added, weighing the words in his hands. “Either way, not great. And then you also have to consider the option that the whole thing’s a lie, and the supposed new muscle is just a contractor for a competitor or someone your guy pissed off who’s trying to get him into extra trouble by pulling stunts in his name behind his back. If so, who’s behind that?” He shrugged, very sure now that everyone was looking at him that he should have kept his mouth more full of booze and less full of words. “Sounds like a total headache. No matter what solution you’re looking at you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

“Damn,” someone muttered from the other end of the table.

“Told you,” Haru replied, preening. Hizashi shot her a look that she cheerfully ignored.

“So, we’re hiring this dude for our analysis team, like, yesterday, right?” Misa asked Shirakumo. Hizashi laughed awkwardly, shaking his head.

“Thanks, but nah. I’m not really the hero type, I’m just a DJ with an overactive imagination. I’ll leave the crime fighting to you guys and just use the talents I was given to help wherever I can,” Hizashi said, raising his glass in a salute down the table.

Haru drummed her heel against the floor, arms crossed tight across her chest and her back against the closed door of her room. Hizashi was sitting at her desk, eyebrows tightly knit together and a hand over his mouth as he re-read the handwritten letter in front of him. Haru’s fist was clenched around the envelope it had come in so tightly she could practically feel her parent’s names written on it along with the return address of Hanajima’s Garden Supply and Boutique Florist.

“This is insane,” Hizashi said finally, his voice hollow.

“Not the word I would have used, but. Yeah,” Haru sighed. She was doing everything she could to suppress the urge to say “I told you so”, but the words kept bunching up in the back of her throat if she thought about them too long. She could only thank her lucky stars she’d been the first one to get home and check the mail today. Right at the top of the pile had been the letter from Hanajima. Haru had snatched it up and ripped it open before she even bothered to take off her shoes. Haru had already been dialing Hizashi to come home before she reached the end of the letter; all it had taken to get him moving was the word “Hanajima”. The two of them had barricaded themselves in Haru’s room, reading the letter one after the other in tense silence.

Dear Yamadas,

It has been quite some time since we last corresponded, and I wish that it could be for a better reason.

Some years ago, you were granted forgiveness on a large lump-sum loan debt to me due to outside assistance. However, it had recently come to my attention that, putting aside the forgiven amount, there was unaccounted for interest remaining on the amount registered as paid off which has in turn gathered interest in the intervening years.

Per our previous agreement, as this amount was accrued prior to your loan forgiveness, the sum total of seven hundred eighty-thousand yen remains on your account in need of repayment. I understand that you may need some time to gather such an amount. I am willing to work out an attenuated payment plan similar to your previous repayment schedule, should you need such accommodations.

I hope this letter finds you all well, and I look forward to hearing from you regarding the issue I have outlined above.

Sincerely, Keijiro Hanajima

Hizashi sighed, scrubbing his hand over his face. “He’s got to know he can’t pull this over on me,” he said, thumbnail scraping irritably at the corner of his mouth. “I’m too deep in his money, I know this is wrong.”

“He was probably counting on Mom and Dad not telling us,” Haru said. “He knows they didn’t tell us about the loan, and that you still haven’t told them that you’re the one that got them off the hook.”

Hizashi’s expression clouded over even more at that. He chewed the inside of his cheek, then shook his head. “I’ll take care of it.” He said it like that was the last of the conversation, holding out a hand to Haru for her to give him the envelope as he dialed a number into his phone. He looked up at her when she didn’t hand it to him, flexing his fingers in a “dude, c’mon” sort of getsure. “Mr. Hanajima, it’s Yamada. Yessir, I’m well, how are you?” he said, glaring at Haru when she moved the envelope to her far hand.

“Put it on speaker,” Haru mouthed, signing the words as well to make sure he got the point. Hizashi widened his eyes meaningfully at her as he shook his head sharply.

“I’m handling it,” he mouthed back. “Yessir, everything’s fine, I just had something to talk to you about if you have a minute,” he said brightly into the phone. Haru replied by signing “Not leaving. Speakerphone. Now.” and crossing her arms. Hizashi gritted his teeth, grudgingly putting his phone down on the desk and turning on speakerphone. He put his middle finger to his lips, reminding her to keep quiet and flipping her the bird all in one motion. Haru rolled her eyes at him but did her best to not to exist for the moment.

“I’d say there were better times, but I’m sure you’ll get to the point,” Hanajima was saying from the other end.

“Of course. It’s about a letter that was sent to my parents today,” Hizashi said. He was keeping his voice on the lighter end of neutral, but his expression was stormy and his leg had started thumping irritably.

There was a short silence on the other end of the line, then Hanajima asked in a pointedly calm voice, “Do you make a habit of reading other peoples’ mail?”

“Only when I assume from the return address that it’s mine,” Hizashi said, coldly chirpy. “There, uh. Seems to be a discrepancy between what I was told when I signed on and what you’re telling them in this letter, sir. Something about unforeseen interest?”

“I know my own business, Yamada,” Hanajima said coolly.

Haru barely held in a snort, rolling her eyes. “What a tool,” she mouthed to Hizashi, who bit back a grin and waved for her to keep still.

“I’d never dream to imply otherwise, sir,” Hizashi said. “It’s more a question of numbers. I’ve been keeping a log of my payments and theirs for a while now, sir, for my own records. There’s nothing that would add up to the kind of money you’re asking for.”

To Haru’s surprise, Hanajima gave a sardonic, almost patronizing snort of laughter. “I’m sure that’s how it is in your records,” he said. “It would be rather inconvenient for all of you if it suddenly happened that you owed an even greater sum to me than previously thought, wouldn’t it? But unfortunately sometimes that’s just how these things go.”

“With all due respect, sir--” Hizashi began, his thinning patience beginning to show in his tone.

“Which is a lot, Yamada, and I would hope you and your parents keep that fact in mind,” Hanajima said. “You have a diligent mind, Yamada, but human error can make numbers do a remarkable amount of things, particularly when there is a conflict of interest to spurr it along. Money is owed and money will be paid. That’s just business.”

Hizashi’s jaw went rigid, hands balling into tight fists on the desk. “Of course, sir,” he said through gritted teeth. “My mistake. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Hanajima agreed. Without any kind of pleasantry or signoff he hung up, leaving Hizashi seething in his wake.

Haru let out a long, low whistle. “That went well,” she muttered in a half-hearted attempt at levity. Hizashi didn’t reply, his eyes staring hard into the middle distance. He straightened up in the chair, coming to some grim decision.

“Haru?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“I need you to do me a favor,” Hizashi said as he stood up.

“What?” Haru asked warily. Hizashi fixed her with a determined stare. She had the sudden thought of how grown up he looked now; the past five years had taken the last of the adolescent roundness out of his features and made him all sharp angles and seriousness.

“When I go out tonight, don’t follow me,” Hizashi said.

“Zash,” Haru sighed, just on the edge of wheedling. Hizashi’s expression didn’t falter. Haru frowned, nodding in grudging agreement. “Fine. But you remember that promise you made me, got it? If this goes to shit, you call me,” she said, poking him meaningfully in the chest.

Hizashi’s mouth quirked up into a very slight smile. He wrapped his arms around her and gave her a tight squeeze. “I know, I will. Everything’s going to be fine, I promise.”

“Oh my god, did you guys hear about what happened with Mr. Hanajima from the flower shop?” Hoshi asked a few days later over dinner. Haru’s head jerked up at the sound of the name, heart in her throat. She shot Hizashi a glance out of the corner of her eye, but he had his eyes locked on his plate as he calmly cut his steak into increasingly smaller pieces.

“Who’s that?” Hinako’s stepson Hitoshi piped up.

“An old friend of Nan and Jii-chan,” Hinako said, motioning for him to not get distracted and finish his dinner.

“What about him?” Haru asked as Hoshi all but vibrated in their chair with the barely-restrained excitement of a teenager with hot gossip to share.

“Okay, so get this: everybody thought he was just a florist or whatever, but he’s actually been running this huge money scheme out of his shop and loansharking all these people and has all these ties to, like, yakuza and stuff,” Hoshi said.

“What’s a yakersha?” Hitoshi asked around a mouthful of vegetables.

“It’s ‘yakuza’, don’t talk with your mouth full, and never mind,” Hinako’s wife Mara said, once again turning the eight-year-old’s attention back to his plate.

“Fumiko Nakamura from the second year class says she heard from her uncle that Hanajima lost it and just spilled everything to the cops over the phone,” Hiro added, catching the spark of his twin’s infectious energy. “They got him on tape and everything.”

“He totally got arrested right in front of me and Hiro while we were walking to school today, it was crazy!” Hoshi finished, eyes bright.

“He always seemed so...legitimate. You never do know with some people I suppose,” their father said haltingly with a slightly strained laugh. Their mother reached out and squeezed his hand.

Haru stared hard at Hizashi, not so much as blinking until he finally relented and looked up at her. He met her gaze smiling calmly with nothing behind his eyes. It was disconcerting how easily he could switch himself off like that.

“How?” Haru signed to him, using the smallest motions she could.

“Don’t worry. It’s over,” Hizashi replied. Haru frowned, having had about enough of his sideways, noncommittal answers.

“You two all right down there?” their father asked before Haru could press him for details.

“I took the last popover and she needed to call me a few things she can’t say in front of the shortstack,” Hizashi said brightly, grinning over at Hitoshi.

“Language,” their father teased with a faux-stern look at Haru.

“He started it,” Haru groused, sticking her tongue out at Hizashi. Hizashi gave her a tight smile of thanks for playing along. Haru rolled her eyes but nodded back. This would just get added to the mounting pile of things about her brother she was never going to get a straight answer about, she supposed moodily.

“It was really cool to finally meet you, dude,” Shirakumo said as he and Hizashi walked down the street towards the train station. “Haru talks about you all the time, I think we were all kind of chomping at the bit to finally meet the mythical Hizashi.”

“I am pretty great,” Hizashi joked, tossing his hair over his shoulder. Shirakumo let out a loud, snorty laugh. It was really no wonder he was such a popular hero, Hizashi thought. His height and broadness gave the impression of an intense bearing when you first met him, but it was quickly balanced out by his open ultra-honest personality. Even the jagged scars that cut through his right eyebrow and down the side of his face seemed charismatic in their own way, giving him a well-traveled, swashbuckling kind of charm.

“Sorry about Misa jumping on you like that, by the way,” Shirakumo went on with a self-conscious grimace. “It’s been so long since we’ve taken a break from work that I think we’ve all kind of forgotten how to switch off and chill out.”

“No worries, I know how that goes. You should ask Haru what it’s like trying to get me to shut up when we get someone interesting in the studio for an interview,” Hizashi replied, waving the apology away. “I end up annoying myself half the time.”

Shirakumo snort-laughed again. “I dunno, that seems pretty interesting to me. Maybe we could grab something to eat sometime and you can tell me about it instead.”

He said it so smoothly that Hizashi almost agreed offhand without thinking about it. The word caught behind his teeth just in time as his brain caught up with what was actually being said. “Erm. Right,” he said instead, not having to force the awkwardness in his tone. “Haru told you I’m fresh off a breakup, didn’t she?”

Shirakumo flushed. “She...might have mentioned something about you being in kind of a funk,” he hedged.

Hizashi smiled in spite of himself. Two for two on dashing heroes who can’t lie to save their soul, he thought, amused. “I appreciate the offer, don’t get me wrong. But I, uh. I’m not sure it’s a great time for me to have something going on with someone,” he said, trying to be as gently vague as he could.

“Yeah, no, I totally get that,” Shirakumo said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to push, I just--”

“Haru made you promise to hit me up at least once tonight,” Hizashi guessed, letting him off the hook of trying to put it into nicer words. Shirakumo grinned.

“Guilty,” he admitted. He paused, then added. “I think she’s been worried about you, to be honest. I mean, Haru isn’t really the worrying type, but you can tell sometimes.”

“Yeah, she does that,” Hizashi agreed, fondness creeping into his tone. For all the shit he gave his sister about meddling and fussing over him, he couldn’t help being grateful for the concern. “It really wasn’t as big a deal as she seems to think, though. We went to coffee a couple times, for drinks, hung out at his place, nothing too intense.” Aizawa’s face flashed to the front of his mind, twisted in terrified fury as he called Hizashi nothing but a problem in his life. Hizashi shook his head. “We just realized we wanted different things out of the relationship. People are people, what are you gonna do?” he added with a breezy shrug.

“True,” Shirakumo said, nodding, as they reached the train station doors. “So, can I maybe platonically give you my number instead?” he asked with a slightly cheeky grin. “I wasn’t just hitting on you when I said it was cool hanging out with you tonight.”

Hizashi hesitated, drowning in irony with no hope of explaining why to Shirakumo. He needed to let Shirakumo down gently and walk away, but his brain seemed to want to help him precisely not at all in thinking of a way to do that. “Sure,” Hizashi said finally, unlocking his phone and handing it to Shirakumo. “I’ll text you the next time Haru threatens to muzzle me for talking her ear off about celebrity gossip.”

“Deal,” Shirakumo said, handing his phone over so that Hizashi could put his number in as well. “Don’t be a stranger!” he added as they swapped phones back and he turned to head home.

I swear to god if if I have to sit through one more meeting where I get voluntold to pick up another department’s slack in the same sentence as management trying to cut my intern’s hours I’m going to chug a two-liter of Surge and burp so loud I bring this whole mfer down with me.

Shouta stared at his phone, his sleep-addled brain trying to make sense of whether Yamada meant the text as a threat or not. He’d been catching a quick power nap in the back of his truck during his lunch hour and had been most of the way asleep when the rattle of his phone on the metal floor jolted him awake again. Not helping his attempt to dissect the meaningless hyperbole was Yamada’s follow up text of lmao it u along with a gif of a cat trying to jump from a bed to a dresser and falling halfway with the caption “parkour!”. He wouldn’t put it past Yamada to be the type to threaten in one breath and quote a meme in the next, but he couldn’t wrap his brain around why Yamada would be sending him incriminating evidence via text message during work hours.

Two new messages came in quick succession as Shouta was trying to puzzle things out.

Oh my god

Those were supposed to go to my sister holy shit

So not an admission or a threat, just an idiot with a cell phone. Shouta groaned, eyes rolling back in his head in disgust at how much energy he had wasted on taking Yamada seriously yet again.

forget it Shouta sent back.

Cute cat pic for ur trouble? Yamada replied along with a picture of a gangly black cat with bright yellow eyes. The cat was sprawled on its back in a pile of kibble and the shredded scraps of a cat food bag. Shouta snorted, grinning a little in spite of himself at the self-satisfied look on the cat’s fuzzy little face.

cute he texted, trying to distill as much exhaustion and disinterest into the single word as possible.

That’s Ai-chan. She’s a monster, but she’s my monster <3

So what are you up to? Break from work?

Shouta sighed, rubbing his temples. It was impossible to freeze out someone who was so willing to keep the conversation going without outside input.

trying to catch some sleep before afternoon deliveries Shouta replied as pointedly as he could.

Oof. Busy night?

do you need something? Shouta asked, stabbing the send key a little harder than he really needed to. There was a short, offended pause from Yamada’s end of the line; Shouta could picture him looking down at his phone with that little not-quite-pouting moue he always made when things weren’t going his way.

I guess not.

The curt punctuation seemed to signal Yamada had finally gotten the point, just in time to exhaust the last of Shouta’s free time before he had to get going again. Shouta put his phone into his pocket and made a point to not check it again until he was walking home. Waiting for him was another gif, this time of a pair of hands vigorously shaking a bottle of Surge, followed by a message that just said Oh goddammit. Shouta rolled his eyes and deleted the thread without replying.

The perceived slight only kept Yamada at bay for a short time, however. Now that he’d gotten a taste of the man’s texting habits Shouta had to wonder how Yamada managed to get anything done. No matter when his breaks were during the day it seemed like Yamada always had some new meme or gif or general workplace complaint to gift him with in the meantime, whether it was before dawn or after dark or occasionally both.

do you actually have a job or do they just pay you to bother me? Shouta finally asked as he waited at an interminable red light several days later. Yamada had been on a spree that morning, flooding his inbox with an illustrated play-by-play of Ai-chan’s newest misdoings while Shouta had four straight hours of back-to-back deliveries.

Excuse you, Yamada texted back loftily, I am an integral part of station management! Who occasionally may or may not take extra long bathroom breaks to avoid getting roped into being more integral than I already am.

my bad. clearly you’re just doing your part to prevent asahi radio from being razed via belch Shouta replied, snorting out a laugh before he could stop himself. He paused, frowning. That was both new and unwelcome.

Yamada sent back a long line of laugh-crying emojis followed by Look who grew a sense of humor just in time to drag me!

don’t act like you know me.

Yeah, yeah. Scout’s honor, I won’t tell anybody you’re actually funny.

Shouta scowled, dropping the phone onto the seat next to him and pulling through the light as it finally turned green. Despite the chilly weather he rolled his window down to get some airflow on his face. He hadn’t turned on the truck’s heater yet but his cheeks already felt way too warm.

Shouta spent his next day off drinking too much coffee at the cat cafe while he tried to reign in the chaos that his computer desktop had become. His phone buzzed on the table beside him and Shouta swiped in the passcode with one hand while the other was dragging a huge load of defunct backup files to his computer’s trash. He’d sooner walk into traffic than admit it to Yamada, but having a passcode on his phone was turning out to be less of an inefficient hassle that he’d always thought it would be and did make him less anxious about putting it places that weren’t his pocket or his hand.

As if waiting for the thought to cue him in, the alert was for yet another of Yamada’s early-morning memes. This time it was a gif of a kitten trying to stay awake before it wobbled and flopped out of frame. Yamada’s accompanying caption read That midweek feeling hitting hard today along with an emoji of a sleeping face with a snot bubble.

it’s monday Shouta texted back.

When you work 24/7 it’s always midweek, Yamada replied.

implying you work at all. still not convinced.

I resent that, Aizawa. It takes a lot of skill and determination to shovel this much shit and still have spare time to be a full-time pain in the ass.

Shouta almost allowed himself a laugh at that, but the air caught in his throat at Yamada’s next question.

So, do you do all of your important hero research on the public wifi at kitty cafes, or is today a special occasion?

What do you mean? Shouta asked warily.

Behind you.

Shouta turned slowly, dreading what he knew he was about to see. Yamada was standing on the sidewalk outside, grinning at him over the top of his cell phone. He gave Shouta a little wave before sauntering in and up to the counter. He chatted amiably with the baristas as they made his order. Shouta frowned to himself, trying to work out the quickest way to pack up his belongings while disturbing as few sleeping cats as possible. The moment came and went too quickly, however, as Yamada came over with two cups of coffee in his hands.

“Black with one sugar, right?” Yamada said. He slid one of the steaming mugs in front of Shouta. “That’s what they said anyway,” he added, nodding up towards the counter.

“What are you doing here?” Shouta asked coolly. Yamada frowned at him.

“I was on my way to the post office to mail a couple things and empty the station P.O. box and saw you in the window,” Yamada said. “I figured we could sit and chat since we both have a minute.”

“You just kind of assume you’re welcome wherever you decide to be, don’t you?” Shouta said.

Yamada snorted. “If that’s the worst thing someone tells me about myself today, I’ll count it as a win,” he replied, toasting Shouta with his coffee cup. He invited himself to sit down in the only chair not currently occupied by cats. “Wait, is that a spreadsheet with my name on it?” he added with sudden interest, arching his neck around to peek at Shouta’s screen. Shouta slammed the lid of his laptop shut, feeling his face heating.

“Do you need something?” Shouta asked, trying to redirect the conversation and get Yamada back on his way as quickly as possible.

“Just caffeine and conversation,” Yamada shrugged. “Is it illegal to ask someone about their day?”

“Implying you care about whether or not you’re doing something illegal,” Shouta replied curtly. To his annoyance Yamada just chuckled and shrugged.

“I mean, you’ve got me there,” he said. “So, what are you working on?” Yamada added, lowering his tone just slightly.

“Catching up on some things,” Shouta said, intentionally vague. “Organizing research. It takes longer when you’re doing it on your own.”

“I bet,” Yamada agreed. “Would probably save you some time and effort to have a permanent back door into places you’re not supposed to be, huh?” He said it with a too-even speculation that set Shouta instantly on edge.

“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” Shouta said.

“I know people who know things,” Yamada said with a broad, conspiratorial grin over his coffee mug. “Keeping your friends close and your enemies closer is a lot easier when you can tell which is which.”

Shouta felt a frisson of discomfort run up his spine at the implication of where Yamada considered him to be on that spectrum. “I think I liked it better when you were threatening me,” he muttered. “Don’t make more of that than there is,” he added quickly as Yamada’s smile grew cheeky and he opened his mouth to comment. Yamada did his annoying little not-quite-pouting pout and let out a quiet “hmph” at his joke being preempted.

“In any case, you probably don’t need me to tell you how to crack a secure password,” Yamada said. “Even when they’re clever they’re usually related to either the one who sets them or the thing they’re locking up, or they’re something pseudo-random cooked up by a number generator. Sometimes they get stupid-clever and try to do all three.”

“Mmn?” As bored as he was trying to sound, Shouta couldn’t help taking mental notes on what Yamada was saying. Yamada was a flippant trouble-maker from the word go but there were moments where he displayed actual talent for the things he claimed to be an expert in.

“Oh yeah,” Yamada said. “They’re trying for layers of security, but too many moving parts makes passwords way easier to out-think. Codes are only as smart as the people who write them, y’know?”

“And you know how smart they are?” Shouta asked, trying to keep his tone casual as he goaded Yamada into staying on a roll. Yamada caught his drift a little too well, however, and the sharp, meaningful grin came out again.

“I know people who know things,” he said again. “I’d be willing to let you in on a few trade secrets for the low, low price of a certain five-letter word beginning with ‘f’.”

Shouta snorted. “Hard pass.”

“Well, I tried,” Yamada said, shrugging. He checked the time on his phone and sighed. “That’s about my lot, I’m afraid. Gotta get back before the world ends.” He stood and stretched with a groan. “We should do this again sometime. Maybe talk less shop.” The offer seemed oddly genuine and Shouta wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about that.

He tried to get back to work after Yamada left, but his concentration had been thoroughly broken. He bought another coffee and turned on some neutral background music; his brain, however, was no longer in the mood to stare at a screen and try to riddle out what his new sub-folders should be called. Finally Shouta dislodged the many cats who had taken up residence in and around his lap and packed up his laptop to see if fresh air on the walk home and a change of venue might help get him back on task.

Shouta nudged his apartment door closed with his heel, scooping the mess of envelopes out of his mail bin. It was mostly the normal jumble of junk and bills, but amongst the shuffle was a thin white payroll envelope with his name and address on the front in too-familiar spidery handwriting. Just going to empty the station mailbox indeed, Shouta thought with a groan. Yamada was way too fond of theatrics. He tossed the envelope onto his sofa without opening it and delayed paying it any attention until he’d put everything away, showered, and had a lengthy play session with his cats. If it was unimportant enough for Yamada to not just hand it over when they were in the same room together, Shouta told himself, then there was no need for him to bend over backwards to pay attention to it the instant he got home.

Finally his excuses ran out and he tore the envelope open. Inside were two pieces of paper folded separately into sharp thirds. The first was a handwritten note on Asahi Radio letterhead that read:

Aizawa-

I need a favor. I have a line on something but doing it alone might be tricky. You’ll just be the go-between, nothing dire. Meet me Friday, 9pm sharp.

-M

Also included was another of Yamada’s meticulously notated hand-drawn maps, at the other end of which was a complex of storage units bordered on all sides by a spike-topped chain link fence. Shouta peered into the dark, abandoned-looking guard booth, wondering if the first step to tonight’s goings-on was having to find his own way inside.

“Hey, you made it!”

Shouta turned to see a dark-haired man slouching up towards him from the other end of the sidewalk. He eyed the man warily, about to say he had the wrong person, but stopped as he stepped into the light and raised his sunglasses with a smirk. Yamada had stuffed all of his hair under a short, spiky black wig and a black and green snapback, slicked down his mustache and covered it in a thin layer of skin-colored makeup to blend it in with his face, and buried himself in baggy jeans and a jacket that made him look both heavier-set and a few inches shorter than he actually was. The only things that gave him away were his sharp too-green eyes and his unmistakable grin, full of crafty smugness at Shouta’s open surprise at his appearance. Yamada did a full turnaround of the odd costume, ending the twirl with a dramatic pose.

“Not a bad look for me, huh?” he said, wiggling his eyebrows.

Shouta snorted. “You look like a washed-up pop star who’s trying to pretend he still has to avoid the paparazzi,” he replied flatly.

To his surprise Yamada let out a burst of full-throated laughter at the remark. Shouta wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Yamada laugh in genuine amusement before now, only the occasional mocking chuckle or triumphant snicker. He had a loud, whinnying kind of laugh that tapered off into short bursts of wheezy, hyena-like giggles behind his hand as he remembered himself and tried to tamp it down.

“Okay, cynical,” Yamada said, still coughing through the last of his laughing fit. “Everyone’s a critic.” He rolled his eyes and gave a flourishy “well, what are you gonna do” kind of shrug. Shouta scowled at him.

“What are we doing here?” Shouta asked, doing his best to ignore Yamada’s grandstanding despite the growing burn of annoyance creeping up his face.

“Just a quick jaunt into my evil lair,” Yamada said cheerfully. He punched an entry code into the number pad next to the guard house, then pressed his thumb to the scanner underneath. The keypad flashed green and beeped an affirmative, and a small portion of the gate swung inward. “C’mon,” Yamada said. He motioned for Shouta to follow him as he led the way through the rows of squat cinder block units to one in the very back left corner of the lot.

“People with money can afford secret basements and underground boltholes wherever they need them,” Yamada said over his shoulder as he bent down to unlock the door of the unit, “but the rest of us have to make do with what we’ve got.” He lifted the door just high enough for himself and Shouta to duck under, then set it back down with a clatter. The unit was pitch-black and humid inside and smelled like a mixture of burnt-out electrical parts, solder, and partially cured epoxy glue. “I’ll get the lights, one sec,” Yamada said. Shouta heard him scrabbling along the wall to find the light switch, then a click. A fluorescent shop light flickered and buzzed to life above them, flooding the unit in intense blue-white light. Yamada turned to Shouta and spread his hands wide. “Taa-daa! Welcome to the inner sanctum.”

It looked more like a high school shop room that had sublet space to a thrift store. The left wall had been covered in a cluster of flat-pack bookshelves, their shelves bowing under a jumble of storage boxes labeled things like “radio parts-LIVE”, “speaker wire”, “tape--sticky”, and “tape--magnetic”. The back wall was one long anchored shelf divided into slots that held overstuffed file folders bundled together with rubber bands and binder clips. The only wall not covered in shelving or projects was taken up with a butcher block work table and a cork board with scribbled notes and schematics pinned to it.

“Kind of rinky-dink, but it gets the job done,” Yamada said fondly. “Anyway. First things first, did you happen to wear the stab vest I gave you?” he asked over his shoulder as he ducked under the work table and retrieved a box marked with today’s date.

“Yeah.” The assurance that his part in tonight would be “nothing dire” had put Shouta on high enough alert that he’d forced himself to put pride aside and opt for personal safety instead.

“Thank god. So, basically what I need is for you to be my stand in while things get underway tonight,” Yamada said. “I’d go on my own, but the meeting place is kind of a...no-go area for me right now due to certain people who frequent it.”

“And you’d rather send me in looking like you instead?” Shouta asked, raising an eyebrow at him. Yamada stared at Shouta like he’d started speaking French.

“What? God, no, what gave you that idea?”

Shouta sighed, silently counting to ten in his head as his patience frayed. “You just said I’m supposed to be your stand in.”

“Oh. Okay, yeah, poor choice of words. Think stunt double, not body double,” Yamada explained. “I just need you to be a good-faith warm body, I’ll be handling the rest with this.” He reached into the box and pulled out something that looked like a cold weather mask had been extruded into a large funnel shape at the bottom edge. Shouta looked from it to Yamada, who was beaming in obvious self-pride.

“Which is…?” Shouta prompted.

“Which is your half of a two-way radio with a built in broadcasting speaker,” Yamada said, turning the top edge inside out to show Shouta the wiring and speakers sewn into it. “At first I thought maybe I could just have you memorize a script and I’d step in if things got too off-book, but you’re not very good at lying under pressure so I wasn’t sure that would fly,” he continued. Shouta wasn’t sure if that was meant as an insult or not. “So instead, we have this to work with. I can use this--” Yamada pulled up his sleeve to show a tiny microphone taped to the inside of his wrist-- “to talk to you or talk as you, depending, as long as I stay within ten or twelve feet of you at all times.” The last part he said in one of his uncomfortably accurate impressions of Shouta’s voice.

“And that’s why you’re dressed like that?” Shouta said.

“Exactly. I’ll have to be close enough to you that the receiver can pick up the signal, and it’ll be way easier to read the room if I’m, y’know, in the room.”

“If you were going to put on a costume and go anyway, why didn’t you just do that and go on your own?” Shouta asked.

Yamada frowned and waved a finger at him like he was scolding a child. “Eh-eh-eh. No questions asked, remember? You know as much as you need to know, and you don’t need to know any more than that. Now stand still so I can get you wired up.”

Shouta grudgingly stood with his arms straight out from his body as Yamada turned him into a human switchboard. With a combination of strategic placement and gaffer tape Yamada ran a long wire with an audio jack on one end and a battery connection on the other from Shouta’s waist up his left side to just under his collar bone. Another wire ran the length of his inner arm from shoulder to wrist and ended in a loop with a switch on it that fit over the first knuckle of his thumb. All he had to do, Yamada said as he taped it all down, was press the switch when he needed to talk to Yamada and let it go when he was finished. “Y’know,” Yamada said, “like those cheap walkie-talkies you used to play with as a kid.”

“I ended up making this a lot bigger at the bottom so that we can hide all of our crimes under it,” Yamada muttered as he slipped the mask over Shouta’s head. He was back in the extreme focus mode Shouta had seen him slip into before, attention laser-focused and the corner of his mouth between his teeth as he connected all the wires and power sources underneath. He pulled an earpiece up under the mask by its wire and stuck it in Shouta’s ear before reaching up to fuss with Shouta’s hair and make sure it was hiding everything sticking above the mask. Shouta shivered involuntarily at the touch, barely resisting the urge to pull away. “With the right top layer all of this should be more or less invisible,” Yamada went on, frowning appraisingly as he took a step back to examine his handiwork. He rummaged through a few things in the box and surfaced with a heavy black zippered jacket. “I had to guess sizes, but I think this one should be close enough.”

Yamada unzipped the jacket and held it out so that Shouta could shrug into it. Shouta eased the jacket on, trying not to disturb the network of wires all over him. Yamada zipped it up almost to the top, open enough to seem casual but still high enough to cover all but the face portion of the mask and its contents. It wasn’t a terrible fit other than being slightly short in the sleeves and restrictive around the shoulders. Shouta bent and twisted his arms, trying to stretch it out without doing damage to the electronic infrastructure. Yamada untied the audiojack end of the main wire from Shouta’s belt loop and stuck it into a small cheap-looking disposable cell phone.

“This should have enough battery to keep a recording of the whole thing,” Yamada said. “Can you give me a quick mic check to make sure everything’s hooked up?”

“Uh. Testing,” Shouta said.

Yamada seemed to like what he saw in the waveforms on the phone’s screen. He smiled in satisfaction before stretching a piece of tape around the back of the phone and carefully taping it into place in Shouta’s pocket. “If we head out right now we should get there early enough to do a few on-site checks,” Yamada said, checking the time. “Shall we?”

The two of them walked a few blocks from the storage unit to a cramped, dim little pub. Yamada walked at tailing distance behind Shouta the whole way, testing the range on the homemade gear by giving Shouta directions to where they were going. The audio was relatively clear if they stayed within Yamada’s estimation of ten or so feet; after they hit closer to the twelve-foot mark it got fainter and fainter until dropping out completely as they reached about fifteen feet. Again Shouta had to wonder why, if they were essentially going to be handcuffed to one another anyway, Yamada couldn’t have just gone undercover by himself.

“Grab a drink at the bar and go sit at one of the high-top tables,” Yamada said as Shouta opened the bar’s door and made his way in. “That’s where he’ll be expecting you.”

“Any advice on how to recognize whoever I’m supposed to be meeting?” Shouta muttered back under his breath.

“No idea, he said he would find you. That’s pretty standard for a meeting like this,” Yamada added before Shouta could protest. “Nobody wants to get jumped outside before negotiations even get underway. Think of it as a blind date, but nefarious.”

Shouta sighed loudly, making sure he hit the switch so that Yamada would hear him. Yamada’s never-ending supply of bad metaphors was the last thing he needed right now.

“Calm down, Aizawa,” Yamada said. “Remember, all you have to do is sit there and look pretty, I’ll handle the talking.” There was a short fizzle of static as Yamada entered the pub and made his way to a secluded booth in the back corner. “Still read me?”

“Yeah.”

“Excellent. What’s your poison?”

“Pardon?”

“Beer? Wine? Shot of whiskey to settle your nerves?”

“You really want alcohol anywhere near all this equipment?” Shouta asked, bewildered.

“It’s just for show, who goes into a bar and doesn’t order anything? You shouldn’t drink anything they serve here anyway, their bartending is a bad joke,” Yamada said dismissively. “I just need to test the audio output and make sure we’re good to go before the main event.”

“Then just do it,” Shouta said shortly. “Didn’t you just say you were going to handle all the talking?”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Yamada muttered again. His usual flippant chill had gained an undertone of cranky tenseness that was less than reassuring. “Can I get a bottle of Sapporo?” Yamada said aloud in Shouta’s voice. Shouta just managed to turn toward the bartender in time for the question to seem natural. The bartender, a smirking woman with long brown hair held back in a red ribbon, gave him an appraising once-over. She seemed to be unimpressed with what she saw.

“Sure,” the bartender said. She reached into a cooler under the counter and came back with the bottle of beer, popping the lid off before placing it on the bar in front of Shouta.

“Thanks,” Yamada said, far more cheerfully than Shouta had ever said the word. Shouta nodded his own thanks and went to go sit at one of the high tables in a cluster near the front. He drummed his heel on the bottom rung of the bar stool. The bar was basically empty and silent other than the bartender’s phone playing lo-fi swing music from a speaker dock behind the bar. Otherwise it was just Shouta and his undrinkable beer killing time.

“Ohshit.” The words came out as a single noise hissed violently in Shouta’s ear, making him jump.

“What?” he hissed back, avoiding the curious look the bartender was giving him.

“Remember how I said there were some people who made this place a no-go area because they want to kill me?” Yamada said, sounding like he was talking through his teeth.

“Yeah?”

“That’s them coming in. Don’t look at them! Have you never been undercover in your life?” Yamada whisper-shouted as Shouta turned to look over his shoulder at the door. Almost immediately he snapped his head back around, trying to be as casual as possible about pulling the jacket’s hood over his head as he saw Takeshiro and his wife coming in and sitting a few tables away.

“You know them?” Shouta asked, hopelessly hoping Yamada actually meant someone else who was still outside.

“Ye-ep,” Yamada said, distaste drawing the word out several syllables longer than it needed to be. “They’re still kind of sore about a certain scene in a certain alley you might be familiar with.” He scoffed, then hissed, “Wait, you know them?” as Shouta’s tone dawned on him.

The alleyway. Shapes in the dark played back in Shouta’s head, fuzzy from time and panic but falling into clearer place with the new context. A short, stringy figure barking orders and bailing when things got complicated; the other taller and stocky and silent with a plant-based Quirk protecting him. Shouta gritted his teeth, annoyed by how clear the connection seemed now that it was right in front of him.

“Takeshiro works on the night crew in package processing. Takes a lot of sick days now that I think of it. I’ve never actually spoken to his wife but I’ve seen her at office parties before,” he said quietly.

“His wife? Ew,” Yamada said.

“You’re telling me they’re villains?” Shouta asked, ignoring him. Yamada snorted.

“So-called. They work for an egomaniac middleman called Seguchi. Hebiko is Seguchi’s left hand, and Takeshiro’s hers.”

“What did you do to make them want to kill you?”

“Their boss did something stupid with information that wasn’t his and got busted. I had nothing to do with it,” Yamada retorted tartly.

“Right, sure,” Shouta said. “Is this going to be a problem?”

“Nah, shouldn’t be,” Yamada said, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced. “This is why I planned things this way. No reason to bail out before anything happens.” Shouta was about to protest that it made a lot more sense to leave before there was a problem rather than scrambling when they were in trouble, but Yamada spoke first. “Heads up, you’ve got company.”

“So you’re Null.”

Shouta turned to see a lanky man with brownish hair and a narrow, rattish face standing slouched behind him with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his grubby jeans.

“Potentially,” Yamada replied. “You’re Raimaru?” His impression of Shouta’s voice was dead-on, which was bad enough on its own, but there was something just slightly off about his intonation that made Shouta’s skin crawl.

“That’s what they call me,” the man said. ”Getcha a refill while we talk?” he added, nodding at Shouta’s obviously untouched beer.

“I’m fine, thanks.” Shouta fiddled with the neck of the bottle to make it seem less like a static prop on the table in front of him. Even if Yamada had been against the idea of giving him a script to follow, some guidance on what to do in general might have been nice. He felt stiff and awkward, like a puppet whose puppeteer only had a vague idea of how natural movements worked.

“Suit yourself,” Raimaru shrugged. He ambled off to talk to the bartender, seeming to be doing his best to chat her up as she mixed his drink.

“‘Null’?” Shouta muttered to Yamada.

“Short for ‘nullify’, like your Quirk. Get it?” When Shouta just sighed in reply, Yamada added defensively, “Well, I had to call you something, didn’t I?”

“Did you?”

“What did you want me to say, ‘oh by the by you’ll be meeting my friend Shouta Aizawa, he’s thirty, single, a Scorpio, and lives in a single-occupancy uptown with three cats’?” Yamada retorted.

He technically had a point and Shouta hated that the most out of all the things he hated about this evening so far. Yamada had no time to gloat over the win, however, as Raimaru came back and dropped onto the stool across from Shouta.

“Kind of a hassle, having to be the face of cleaning up all of your boss’s bad behavior, huh? From what I’ve heard he’s got plenty to go around,” Raimaru said. Shouta privately agreed with the sentiment, but Yamada snorted instead.

“I get paid to go where I’m told, not to pass judgements,” Yamada replied stiffly. Shouta resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the defensive bluster. Raimaru laughed for him.

“I dunno about that. There’s plenty of judgement to go around if you want some,” Raimaru said. “Seems like the only books he can get into these days are peoples’ bad ones.”

“You think he gives a damn about anyone’s books other than his own?”

“I’m just saying I know a glorywhore when I see one. He spends all of his time making deals and playing nice and then suddenly people higher than him start going to jail,” Raimaru said. “Happened to Fukawa, happened to Seguchi, happened to Iwata. Hell, everyone knows he snitched and got Hanajima back in the day but Hanajima got shanked in prison and all his men scattered so nobody talks about him anymore.”

Shouta squirrelled the names away to research later, though other than those names Raimaru had said precious little to convince him that he knew much of anything besides Yamada’s surface reputation. So far his assertions had been vague at best and his “work, am I right?” tone was suspiciously chummy, like he was trying to nudge “Null” into letting something incriminating slip out.

“Why is any of this relevant?” Yamada asked. He sounded equally short on patience with Raimaru’s unsubtle attempts at currying favor. Raimaru gave a slightly passive-aggressive shrug.

“There’s a storm coming. A big one, one that’s gonna hit hard and rewrite a lot of rules about who’s in charge and who’s got a boot on their necks. You’re not gonna be in a great spot if you’re working for the Bird, so I thought you’d wanna know there’s better options,” he said. It was the first thing he’d said that sounded like he actually knew what he was talking about and it was not a reassuring change. Yamada, however, seemed unfazed.

“What, some new jumped-up ‘super’ villain with big plans for a criminal utopia?” Yamada said, unimpressed. “Seen ‘em come, seen ‘em go, nothing of value was lost. You asked me to come here because you had something valuable you wanted to trade. Is that still the case, or should I head out and stick you with the tab for wasting my time?”

“So, that’s a ‘no’ from you?” Raimaru asked, still grinning like someone had wired the corners of his mouth behind his ears.

“I didn’t hear a question being asked, but…” All of a sudden Yamada’s voice trailed off in a fizzle of static. Shouta tensed. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Yamada, who met his eye with a look that was not quite panic but was very, very close to it. Yamada tapped his ear questioningly. Shouta twitched his head to the side in a negative. He saw Yamada mouth “Shit!” before his attention snapped back to the problem in front of him as Raimaru let out a short chuckle.

“Never a good idea to use radio signals around me,” Raimaru said smugly. “They usually end up a little...dead.” He casually brought the hand that had been under the table to rest on its surface. It was holding a large pocket knife, which he casually flicked open and closed as he spoke. All of the plastic had been stripped off of the knife, leaving behind just the blades and metal guts holding them together. As Shouta eyed it, the blade began to glow a smokey orange around Raimaru’s fingertips.

“I think we’re done here,” Shouta said, trying to match the off-cadence way Yamada had been using his voice all night.

This only seemed to egg Raimaru on, however, as he cranked his Quirk up another notch. Shouta felt a static prickling like the kind before a huge lightning strike setting the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck on end. A tinny shrilling feedback noise whined through his earpiece, making him jolt and hiss in sudden pain. Shouta gritted his teeth and set his own Quirk on Raimaru instead. A hasty decision, it turned out, as a sudden crash of noise hit him all at once. Yamada’s voice half-shouting in his ear was interlaced with loud snaps of static as the equipment reconnected. Shouta winced at the onslaught, clapping a hand to his ear before he could stop himself. The moment of distraction was all Raimaru needed.

“So the Bird’s doggy wants to bark, huh?” In one fluid motion Raimaru threw what was left in his glass in Shouta’s eyes and hooked a foot under the bottom rung of Shouta’s stool, yanking it from under him. Shouta toppled to the floor, landing hard on his ass and elbows as he futilely tried to catch himself as he fell. He blinked hard, tears streaming as his eyes burned with whatever had been in that glass. Raimaru grabbed him by the front of his shirt and dragged him partially upright.

“Things could have gone better for you, but it looks like the Bird just likes making things difficult,” Raimaru said.

Shouta dug his fingers into Raimaru’s wrist, trying to wrestle himself free. Raimaru smirked, a violent shock sparking off of his skin and into Shouta’s arm. Shouta let out a bark of agony as his entire arm below the shoulder seized and went numb. Someone else’s hand, large and thick-fingered, ripped his back by the forearm, twisting his hand back and up between his shoulder blades. Shouta stiffened. He hadn’t heard Takeshiro or his wife approaching during the scuffle but it was obvious now they had him surrounded. He thought of the alley and the way they had closed ranks around Yamada, accounting for every avenue of escape except for a one-in-a-million outside intervention. Shouta darted a look over to Yamada. Their eyes met for a split second that lasted an eon. Yamada’s eyes were wide and his face had gone deathly pale as he took in the scene in front of him. He was frozen half in motion, caught between breaking cover to come help and his desire to steer clear of Takeshiro and Hebiko. Shouta’s stomach sank as Yamada dropped his gaze, hunching in on himself and pulling his hat down farther to hide his face.

“Last chance, doggy,” Raimaru said. “That signal was too weak to come from very far away. Point us in the right direction and we’ll let you go, no hard feelings. Otherwise we send you back to your master in pieces.”

He leaned in as he threatened, and Shouta took the opportunity to show him how close was too close. Shouta reared back, then rammed his forehead into Raimaru’s nose at full force. As Raimaru reeled back, Shouta slammed himself back into Takeshiro, sending the man spine-first into the edge of a table. Takeshiro grunted in pain and Shouta twisted away from his grasp as Takeshiro tried to catch himself. Raimaru sank his fist into Shouta’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him, but Shouta managed to activate his Quirk again before Raimaru could shock him. Shouta retaliated with a sharp hook, jamming his fist into Raimaru’s solar plexus with as much force as he could muster. As Raimaru doubled over Shouta grabbed a fistful of his hair and slammed him face-first into the table.

“All right, ENOUGH!” the bartender yelled. She was floating above the bar with a warning look on her face, a thin metal pipe leveled at Shouta’s head. Shouta looked from her to Takeshiro and Hebiko, who had backed off behind their table again, to Raimaru, who was staring up from under his hand with undisguised disgust as he bled onto the table. Shouta took a moment to catch his breath, then released Raimaru. Not bothering to see if Yamada would follow, Shouta took the moment of peace to walk out of the bar.

The night air was cold and made his face feel closed in and sticky under the mask. Shouta jerked it down under his chin, sucking in a hard breath. The adrenaline in his veins felt like a cloying, choking compulsion to just run, escape, flee as fast as he could in any direction that would count as away. His lungs burned nearly as badly as his eyes, every new breath feeling like a sharp stab in the chest. A strange itching slightly farther down his abdomen joined the pain in his chest as he half-sprinted down the sidewalk. Shouta looked down and froze mid-step. The bare metal handle of Raimaru’s knife stuck out of his stomach at an almost perfect perpendicular angle, jammed in so far that the tip was pressing the rough kevlar of his stab vest against his flesh.

“Ho-ly shit that was a whole bunch of something.” Shouta didn’t look up from the knife almost in his gut as Yamada’s voice crowed out behind him. He felt Yamada digging in his pocket and retrieving the cell phone. “Could have gone better for sure, but also could have gone worse.” Yamada gave Shouta a cheery smack on the shoulder. “You and I make a pretty good team, huh? C’mon, let’s go find a nicer place to grab a bite and hang out until things die down.”

He paused like he fully expected Shouta to agree and follow after him, but Shouta was barely listening. His mind was still trying to process the knife handle sticking out of his stomach. The night “could have gone worse”? Raimaru had almost made good on the threat to send Shouta home in pieces while Yamada cowered in a corner booth, more worried about being seen than being helpful, and Yamada was congratulating himself for a job well done.

“Aizawa? Earth to Aizawa? Hey, are you okay? You’re shaking.” There was a note of real concern in Yamada’s voice as he reached out a hand to steady the trembling in Shouta’s body.

The idea of Yamada making any kind of physical contact snapped the last bit of sane civility Shouta had left in him. True fury, hot and fast and scraped raw by everything that was running through Shouta’s head, boiled over in his chest. He swung wildly at Yamada, hoping to make contact but hoping more just to fend him off as violently as possible. Yamada yelped and jumped backwards, hands coming up to protect himself.

“Whoa! What the hell--?” Yamada began, but Shouta was already swinging again. He wanted to make Yamada bleed, make him feel even half as agonized and afraid as he did right now. Yamada stumbled away from him, eyes wide in shock and confusion. His back hit the brick wall of a building and Shouta got right up in his face, Quirk blazing and teeth bared in a hateful snarl as he spoke.

“Let me be clear with this, so maybe you’ll hear it over the sound of your own voice,” Shouta said between clenched teeth. “We are not partners. We do not make a good team. We are sure as fuck not friends who hang out. You are a problem in my life that I am trying to solve. Get that through your thick skull and stop acting like we’re in this together.” He pulled the knife out and threw it violently at Yamada’s feet before turning on his heel and striding away as fast as his legs could carry him.

As soon as he staggered into his apartment and secured every lock and deadbolt on his door Shouta stripped down, dumping everything he’d been wearing in a heap in the entryway. Ignoring his cats’ cries for attention, Shouta went straight to the bathroom and ran the shower as hot as he could stand it. He could feel himself shaking now, the dregs of adrenaline making his legs weak rather than holding him up any longer. He sat down in his tub with the scalding water beating against his back, arms wrapped around himself. He looked down and saw a long irritated scratch rising on his stomach where the knife had dragged against him through the vest. Shouta let out a long, unsteady breath and closed his eyes. He’d been a vigilante for long enough to know that it meant going without any kind of help when things went from bad to worse to potentially lethal; until now not even his worst cases had shaken him like this. But those times he’d known the risk going in and taking it on had been his choice, which made all the difference. Yamada had known, though. Yamada had known they should have bailed as soon as their worst case scenario walked in the pub’s doors and he’d used Shouta as a human shield to try to get what he wanted anyway. Shouta gritted his teeth, nails digging into his palms as his hands balled into fists. He shouldn’t have expected anything less from someone like Yamada.

The night was cold and quiet and empty other than Shouta and the two burglars he was silently tailing through the city park. It was almost a smart move on their part to cut through the far edge of the park, away from the main road swarming with police at the site of the corner store they’d broken into. The trees were dense enough to make visibility an issue outside of the hazy halos of light from the lamps along the path and the recently-mowed grass was still short enough to not give their footsteps away. But they hadn’t accounted for someone passing by while listening to police radio dispatches as they skittered away from the crime scene and it was about to make things much more difficult for them.

Getting back out onto the streets felt like finally slipping through the bars of a tiny cage he’d been trapped in. Yamada and his stupid wager still hovered over his head like the Ghost of Bad Choices Past, but Shouta refused to let it disrupt his routines any more than it already had. He crept along in the burglars’ wake, taking long, slow strides to avoid making any noise. The two of them had stopped under the tight row of trees near the park fence to catch their breath. Shouta reached the tree beside the one they were crouched under and pulled himself up through the branches until he reached where the park’s faux-natural manicuring brought the treetops close enough to almost touch. He had a decent vantage point from here, hidden by leaves and the rattling of branches in the night air. The two burglars didn’t look much older than their early twenties at the most, a couple of punk brats diving in way over their heads. Petty criminals were getting bolder and bolder these days, Shouta thought with a frown. They scuttled around in the shadows unbothered while flashier villains took up all of the city’s heroes’ time and energy. Crafty, but not necessarily smart. Activating his Quirk while he could see them but the branches still blocked them from seeing him, Shouta did a quick pat-down inventory of his supplies; the bolases and gags were in their designated hidden pockets at his waist, his zip ties hidden down the back of one boot and his knife stowed in the other, and a spare length of rope sitting in a looped coil around his neck under the collar of his jumpsuit. After the endless hassle his initial run-in with Yamada had caused him in the intervening weeks he was taking no chances.

The two below him were bickering in sharp hissing whispers. One was trying to convince the other that they still had more than enough time and good luck to slip back out of the park and knock over somewhere else before they called it quits for the night. The other was whisper-shouting back that his partner was crazy and they needed to make a break for their safe house right this second before the cops caught wise. He would need to be target number one, Shouta decided. Ego and bravado would make the first one stand his ground and pick a fight, but the other was almost guaranteed to spook and take off if Shouta didn’t take secure him first. Shouta eased a step onto the branch that got the closest to the next tree, readying himself to jump. A second later he froze, jaw locked against the startled gasp stuck in the back of his throat. His phone, tucked away in a pocket within a pocket under his arm, decided now was the perfect time to vibrate hard against his ribs in an insistent, rhythmic ringing. Shouta held his breath as the vibrations ground against bone, pressing his free hand against the pocket to make sure it didn’t make any sound. Finally the call clicked off and he let the breath go in a slow sigh. Not a moment later, though, the ringing began again. Shouta let his brain run through a long, florid string of every swear word he knew as he tried to refocus through the distraction. With his luck it was work calling him in to cover yet another overnight shift while an especially nasty cold ran rampant through the office, but he didn’t have time to investigate. Shouta slid forward, bracing his feet before making the short jump across to the burglars’ tree. He landed a little too hard in his haste and the more jittery one let out a startled squeak.

“Okay, that was definitely not a fucking squirrel!” he hissed as Shouta froze in the foliage above them.

“Would you stop being such a coward?” the braver one snorted. “You don’t have to lose your mind every time a leaf falls. If there was anyone else here I would have heard them by now, remember? If I knew you’d be such a chickenshit about this I would’ve left you for the cops!”

“Screw you for real, dude. Your plan was horseshit without me.”

“And the rest of my night’s been horseshit with you. Shut up and stop jumping at shadows before I knock your ass out myself,” the braver one retorted. “I’m gonna go make sure the road’s clear. Stay here and stay quiet.”

The jittery one muttered something acidic under his breath as his partner skirted the park fence to go check their escape route. Shouta ignored the itch of rapid-fire text alerts from his phone and quickly took advantage of the two splitting up. He dropped down behind the jittery one. As expected, the burglar jumped and whipped at the sound of his landing. He managed to suck in a hard breath and open his mouth to scream for his partner before Shouta knocked the wind out of him with a sharp shot to his sternum. As the burglar doubled over Shouta brought his elbow down hard against the back of his skull. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head as his knees instantly buckled and he dropped to the ground. Shouta took his collar in both hands and dragged him to the far side of the tree. He secured the unconscious man and the wrists and ankles with zip ties, binding his arms to his chest with a length of rope and sliding a cloth gag into his slack mouth just in case. His partner had fully disappeared down the park path but the duffle bag full of their take for the night guaranteed he wouldn’t be gone for too long. Shouta hefted himself back up into the tree to wait, pulling out his phone to see what in the world was so urgent.

He had two missed calls and a series of texts, all from an unknown number. As soon as he saw that the first text read I need a favor Shouta could feel a headache settling into the base of his skull.

I need a favor.

???

Do you have a degausser?

Really big magnet?

Hand drill/screwdriver should work too?

A sense of impending dread crept up the back of Shouta’s neck at the thought of what Yamada might have planned. Sighing, he texted back no no yes. His ears pricked up as he heard quiet grumbling approaching from the direction the braver burglar had wandered off in.

Perf! @ urs? Yamada asked.

“Got to be kidding me,” the burglar muttered as he came back into view.

not there out busy Shouta sent back. He activated his Quirk when he got a clear eyeline on the burglar and shoved his phone back into his pocket.

“If you bailed on me, I swear to god…” the burglar muttered loudly.

Shouta eased his way back down onto the ground as the man continued to berate his absent partner in a furious whisper. He drew up short and rounded on Shouta as he finally noticed he was being followed. A momentary flash of rebuking anger flickered across his face before his expression fell to panicked surprise.

“What the--”

Shouta narrowly dodged a wide punch aimed squarely at his face. As expected, this one was more stubborn and quicker to react than his partner had been. Shouta ducked low and threw his shoulder up under the man’s ribs, winding him and knocking him back. The man kicked out as he staggered, managing to knee Shouta in the jaw. He tried to regain ground by grabbing Shouta by the hood but gave a frustrated groan as it slipped back and away in his hand. Shouta struck back with a hard fist to the man’s knee, reaching up with his other hand to grab the man’s wrist and wrench it to the side. The man fully overbalanced this time, dropping in a tangled, struggling heap with a yowl as Shouta held him down. Shouta managed to bind his hands together behind his back, but getting him to be quiet and stop flailing his legs was an entirely different story.

“Get off me, you psycho! What the fuck are you doing?” the man barked. He bit Shouta on the hand hard enough to draw blood as Shouta tried to gag him. Shouta pulled his hand free with a sharp hiss of pain and the man laughed darkly. “Try it again, I d--” His voice cut off in a doglike yelp as Shouta brought cupped hands slamming against his ears in a full-force thunderclap. He coughed out a few syllabic noises that were almost words and stopped squirming as the disorientation set in. Shouta stuffed the gag into his mouth and tied it in place before zip-tying his feet and wrestling him into a more convenient position.

Shouta dragged both men out the small side entrance to the park and out onto the empty service road. He tied them together around the pole of a roadside assistance phone and set the dufflebag on the flat solar panel on top. Shouta made sure they would stay secure until someone came to get them, then took the phone off the hook and pressed the button for the operator. He set the phone handset down as it began to ring and walked away quickly before anyone could pick up. As he reached the junction with the main road, Shouta dug out his pocket radio and earbuds and tuned into the usual police scanner frequency.

“--repeat, fire service requesting assistance with possible criminal invasion at Iwata residence…”

The premonition of dread was back. Shouta pulled out his phone to see if Yamada had answered back.

Same. @ urs 1 hr?

At least he had enough decorum left to not just let himself in uninvited, Shouta thought with a low sigh as new reports drifted in. 1 hr, he confirmed. It was more or less enough time to finish his patrol, maybe squeeze in a shower, and get some ice on the welt he could already feel raising on his jaw. A criminally short night, especially given how long he had been absent, but it looked like that couldn’t be helped.

The house was an obvious old-money relic, squatting in stately stubbornness amongst the cookie-cutter modern houses around it. An eight-foot-tall hardwood fence boxed it in on all sides, just barely curbing the sprawl of the pristine relaxation garden that surrounded it. It was like walking onto a period drama set piece someone had forgotten to tear down; the whole place smacked of respectable artifice, right down to the reinforced steel gate doors patterned to look like antique wood and the security keypad hidden inside the pillar next to them. Hizashi wondered if Iwata actually thought he was being inconspicuous or if he simply knew he had enough money and influence to not have to be.

The manor’s front door slid open as Hizashi approached up the main garden path. The man in the doorway was fifty at a guess and about half a foot shorter than Hizashi, but carried his stockiness with a relaxed bravado that made up the difference. His smile held the kind of cold benevolence that told desperate people “of course I can help you, you just have to help me help you first”.

“I saw you coming,” the man said a little smugly, gesturing to the smartphone in his hand.

Security system controlled by an app, Hizashi noted, keeping his answering smile neutral. “You must be Mr. Iwata,” he said, bowing.

“And you’re Seguchi’s contact,” Iwata replied, inclining his head. He gave Hizashi a slightly condescending once-over, then asked, “What should I call you?”

“‘Bird’ is fine,” Hizashi said. “They call me ‘Mockingbird’ but that’s a bit much to keep saying over and over. I’d hate to waste your time like that.”

Iwata seemed to find the quasi-flattery amusing, waving for Hizashi to follow as he began to walk around the manor’s outside deck.”You came remarkably highly recommended,” Iwata said as they walked.

“Oh?” Hizashi bit back a smirk at that; he’d made sure he would. With Hebiko and her lot keeping Seguchi’s arrest under wraps to avoid outside power plays it hadn’t taken much more than a few phone calls and a passable Seguchi impression to invite himself into the confidence of several key people from Seguchi’s address book.

“Seguchi thinks a lot of your skills,” Iwata said, nodding thoughtfully. “Have you worked with many others in the business?”

“No one of note other than Seguchi. I was surprised when he handed off this assignment if I’m honest, he’s never mentioned anything about there being anyone senior to him before. But I’m sure he was just banking on your reputation speaking for itself, of course,” Hizashi said, trying to sound appropriately embarrassed by his “accidental slip”.

Iwata didn’t reply, but the tightening in his jaw at the remark was all the confirmation he needed. When he’d reverted the files on the flash drive Hebiko had planted on him, Hizashi found that all the most acerbic communications seemed to be between Seguchi and Iwata. Iwata was only Seguchi’s senior by at most half a rung, but that half rung had obviously been taken in blood and fire and Iwata had no intention of letting anyone forget his place relative to their own. Bruising his ego in Seguchi’s name was a cheap move but Hizashi wasn’t one to let a good opportunity go to waste.

“You aren’t as much of a talker as Seguchi seems to think you are,” Iwata commented as they reached the back of the house. A squat faux-antique addition about the size of a walk-in closet stuck out from the back corner of the house ahead of them; if it hadn’t been so obviously hand-distressed up close it would have seemed like the cut off end of a wing of the house that had been excised to make it fit the shape of the city block.

“Only when the job calls for it,” Hizashi said, shrugging. “Other than Seguchi most people would rather pay me to keep my mouth shut about the things they have me do.”

Iwata chuckled. He slid a section of the door frame aside to reveal an electronic lock; a quick wave of his cell phone over it and the light flicked from red to green and a deadbolt slid back with a clunk.

“Impressive,” Hizashi commented. Iwata smirked.

“After you,” he replied, waving Hizashi inside.

Beyond the door was a short, steep flight of stairs with a sharp twist in the middle that lead down into a cellar under the main house. The walls had been reinforced with concrete to make a main room no bigger than a studio apartment. There were two doors on the far wall that lead into additional spaces; one was shut with the same type of electronic lock on the door as the entrance above ground and the other appeared to be a secure panic room with a recessed steel door. Iwata motioned for Hizashi to follow him into the panic room. The walls were bare white-painted concrete except for the wall across from the sleek hardwood executive desk, which was taken up by a series of large flat screen security monitors that all clicked off in unison as Iwata pressed something on his phone screen.

Iwata sat down in the plush leather chair behind the desk and gestured toward another less impressive wooden chair across from him. “Have a seat,” he said, setting his phone down on the desk and opening the laptop’s lid. The phone’s screen dimmed but didn’t turn completely off; Hizashi wondered if it needed to be kept on to run the security system without the wall of monitors. He tried to seem relaxed but curious, giving the room a quick once-over as he sat down. As a home office it was a bit on the dungeon-ish side but as a bunker it fit the bill pretty well. “I imagine Seguchi filled you in on the tasks I need assistance with?” Iwata asked. When Hizashi shook his head, Iwata’s jaw tightened in annoyance again.

“That isn’t really how Seguchi runs things,” Hizashi said apologetically. “He leaves it up to the client to specify the uh. Specifics. He likes to just be the coordinator. He mentioned something about a database needing opened or filled or some such but otherwise…” Hizashi trailed off with a head shake and a “what can you do” shrug.

“And you took the job anyway?” Iwata asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I go where the money’s coming from,” Hizashi said simply. “Seguchi has some...flaws in how he delivers information but he has useful connections to less lackluster potential employers.” His careful balance of badmouthing and asskissing seemed to be hitting right on target. Every old money boss Hizashi had ever worked for had been a sucker for a lippy, overly ambitious two-timer ready to throw their old employer under the bus for the chance to trade up; Iwata didn’t visibly preen, but the smirk he let slip was proof enough that he was no different.

“In any case, Seguchi seems very sure you’re the man who can track down information that other people can’t find,” Iwata said.

“I do what I can, depending on what you want to get out of it,” Hizashi said carefully. “I just need to know what I’m looking for and how much of it I need to find.”

Iwata’s grin widened, seeming pleased by the apparent bravado. He turned the laptop around to display a list of thirty or forty names, each with a sum of money in red font in the column next to it. “I want everything you can find about everyone on this list,” he said. “They’re of...certain interest to me, and have all decided they would rather not stay in touch as often as they should.”

Hizashi held in a snort, privately impressed that the people on the list had managed to evade Iwata long enough for him to get this desperate. He stood to lean over the desk, quickly scrolling through to get an idea of the job. The list seemed to be all men, and all of them had built up at least a million yen in debt. A few, however, were marked with a third column that showed the owed amount or slightly more in black with a plus sign and the repayment date.

“Some of these accounts look a bit on the settled side,” Hizashi said lightly, not looking up from the screen.

“I’ve never been one to hold back offers of future help to people I know have needed it in the past,” Iwata said, his tone sharpening. “And besides, you can never trust these machines to keep an honest count these days. A computer record might say they’re paid up but who’s to say there isn’t a faulty memory or two somewhere along the line?”

When Hizashi had arrived that night, all he had really been interested in was getting a feel for how useful Iwata might be as a source of information and whether or not he would be a viable defense against retaliation when Seguchi inevitably bought his way out of prison. Now, however, the boiling spike of sudden fury in the pit of his stomach decided that Iwata was going to end the night sans his stockpile of names of interest, his backup drives, and his freedom if the opportunity presented itself.

“A fair deal, all things considered,” Hizashi said. He turned the laptop back around with one hand and while Iwata was distracted with that he reached out his other hand and palmed Iwata’s phone off the desk. He tucked the phone into the back of his waistband under the guise of straightening his jacket as he sat back down. “Obviously the timeframe is going to vary depending on how deep you want me to dig. I’m assuming they’re all private citizens, so once I get around prefecture government security it shouldn’t take longer than, eh. A couple weeks at most from delivery of the list to the data drop,” Hizashi added. He made a vague dismissive gesture with his left hand to cover clicking in on all six bass switches hidden under the glove on his right. The directional focus began to hum against his neck as it came to life. “Should I expect the list tonight?”

“I’ll send a copy of the files to the usual meeting place at noon tomorrow,” Iwata said. “Seguchi should know--what was that?” The room’s floor gave a sudden hard shudder as Hizashi’s boosted subsonic growl rattled through it, interrupting Iwata mid-thought. Hizashi unclenched his fist and cleared his throat, putting on a concerned expression as he looked around the room for the tremor’s source.

“Earthquake, maybe?” Hizashi said slowly. “I read something online about there being a shift detected out at sea pretty recently.”

Iwata frowned and reached for his phone. His look of concerned bemusement only grew as he found the empty space on his desk. He checked all of his pockets, a hint of frantic anger in his movements as he found them to all be empty as well. He opened his mouth, presumably to ask Hizashi where his phone was. Before he could say anything, however, Hizashi squeezed his hand into a tight fist around the controls and let another hollow bass growl rattle its way up his throat and into the foundations. The impenetrable room shook even harder this time, making the chairs and desk rattle off in different directions.

Hizashi stood up quickly, trying not to sound too winded as he said, “This seems like a bad time to be underground, don’t you think?”

“This room is rated to withstand anything nature can throw at it,” Iwata replied dismissively. His expression, however, seemed less confident as Hizashi created another hard, quick tremor that shook two of the security monitors off the wall. Iwata swore under his breath and stormed over to inspect the damage. While his back was turned Hizashi silently closed the lid of the laptop and slid it off of the desk. Once it was tucked under his arm Hizashi quickly backed away towards the door.

“I’ll see myself out,” he said, reaching back with his free hand and retrieving Iwata’s phone. As soon as he had cleared the door Hizashi hit the icon for the security system’s manual panic button, swiping on the option for a fire alert in the main house. Almost instantaneously a buzzer sounded, painfully loud in the cramped quarters. Iwata turned around just in time to see the panic room’s door slam shut and lock down with Hizashi and his electronics on the other side. Hizashi let out a sigh of relief that turned into a rough hacking cough midway through. If he’d know he was going to have to be “on” tonight he would have warmed up first, he thought ruefully; he could already feel the painful little fires setting themselves throughout his vocal chords. He’d just have to chug some honey when he got home and hope for the best, he supposed. Right now finding Iwata’s data backups and making a swift exit before any authorities showed up was a much more pressing matter.

Hizashi went to the locked door next to the panic room and waved Iwata’s phone in front of the lock. It beeped and turned green, popping open the lock with a satisfying click. Never in his life had Hizashi been so glad for the arrogance of old money. Having all of his security eggs in one basket had probably seemed like an obvious choice for ease and efficiency at the time, but not so much now that said basket was on the other side of two inches of reinforced steel.

The room appeared to be a small archive and storage room with boxes of ancient paper files on metal shelves lining the wall. At the far end of the shelves sat a metal firebox the size of a large attache case with the now-familiar electronic lock on the front. A quick swipe from Iwata’s phone and it clicked open as well to reveal six laptop harddrives, all neatly labeled with backup dates over the last six months. Hizashi grinned to himself. He bundled them together in two neat stacks of three with some velcro cable minders and stowed them in a grubby canvas bag he found on the bottom of one of the older sections of shelves. It would take more time and tools than he had to pop the current harddrive out of Iwata’s laptop, so Hizashi made do with just transferring over copies of as many of the newer files he could fit onto the flash drive Iwata had pulled the spreadsheet off of. He’d just have to hope anything with an edit date prior to this month was already on one of the other drives. He checked Iwata’s phone to see what the response ETA was on the security app. Post-work rush hour was thick, granting him a few extra minutes. For good measure Hizashi told the phone to copy its local storage onto the mounted SD card. Better safe than sorry.

Standing there watching progress bars inch forward made him antsy, however, and Hizashi found himself pacing the tiny room as he waited. Once he’d gotten the drives home and checked them he’d need to find an untraceable way to dispose of them. The shredding service was supposed to come for the station’s old backups next week, but management had to sign off on every drive that was given to them to prevent new drives from getting mixed in with the old. Hizashi could maybe sneak one or two into the count and have it come off as human error, but six drives appearing from nowhere would definitely not fly. Just throwing them away might work in the short term, but the moment Iwata came up on charges the police would be searching high and low for any evidence they could scratch up. Harddrives in a landfill on the opposite side of town from Iwata’s disposal sitewould be a gold mine for them and a prison sentence for Hizashi. Destroying them manually and disposing of them piecemeal would be his best option; the only problem was his lack of easily-available tools to do it with. He did, however, know of someone who was almost guaranteed to be just the kind of over-prepared he needed right now.

Hizashi pulled his own phone out of his inside pocket and hit the contact he’d made with the phone number listed on Aizawa’s CV. The line rang and rang, finally clicking over to a short automated message that Aizawa’s voicemail box had never been set up before hanging up on him. Hizashi rolled his eyes, hitting redial as he checked the progress bars; the phone rang out, clicked over to the automated message, and hung up in his ear again. Trust Aizawa to be the type to never answer his damn phone. God willing he would at least be savvy enough to text back, Hizashi thought sourly. It would have been infinitely more satisfying to hear Aizawa’s soul leave his body as he realized Hizashi had been serious about the terms of their deal but he didn’t have time to waste on phone tag right now. Hizashi typed out I need a favor and jabbed irritably at the send button. He rocked on his heels, feeling the hairs on his neck standing up higher and higher the longer the silence stretched on.

“Come on you hermit,” Hizashi muttered under his breath, typing a quick but to the point follow-up of ???. Still no answer. Either Aizawa was busy or was ignoring him; either way Hizashi was losing ground on spare time fast.

Do you have a degausser? It was a long shot, but Aizawa struck him as the type to have a little bit of everything squirrelled away for particularly weird rainy days. Really big magnet? Hand drill/screwdriver should work too? At this point Hizashi would have settled for a 3-hole punch and a nail file if it meant he could have this over and done with.

Iwata’s phone finished copying itself over. Hizashi set his phone down and pulled a spare pin out of the underside of his ponytail to pop Iwata’s SD card out. He slipped it between his phone and its case for safekeeping and dropped Iwata’s phone into the empty fire box. Aizawa’s answering text finally came, as terse and to-the-point as any Hizashi had ever gotten from him.

no no yes

Hizashi grinned, a thrill of relief settling his stomach just a bit. Perf! @ urs? he replied. Iwata’s laptop gave a cheery ping to celebrate finishing its transfer. Hizashi tucked his phone and the full flash drive back in his pocket, giving Iwata's security app one final once-over. Traffic had thinned out faster than he’d expected and the fire service was practically on him now. Hizashi swore under his breath, slapping the fire box closed and grabbing the bag with the hard drives.

Hizashi slid open the addition’s door and waited, ears straining for the sound of people. Rhythmic red- and white-lit shadows of the top of the gate flashed against the fence in front of him, accompanied by the sound of the fire crew trying to force open the steel doors. Hizashi ducked out the addition’s door and crouched in the shadow of it, hiding his phone under his jacket as he checked to see if Aizawa had confirmed he had a hiding place.

not there out busy, Aizawa had replied.

Hizashi grimaced; so much for that idea. He wondered if he might be able to go bother Aizawa at work instead or if he was “busy” with certain other hobbies of his. Hizashi had the sudden mental image of Aizawa on patrol, frantically texting with one hand while he fended off an attacker with the other and had to bite down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. The sound of the gate door slamming open at the far end of the yard brought his mood back down with a jolt that sent his heart into his throat and focused his mind rapidly back on getting out of here quickly.

At the corner of the garden closest to him there was a conveniently tall mossy rock that would make a decent boost over the fence if he could get a good run-up on it . Hizashi stuffed his phone in his pocket and looped the bag of drives around his neck. Trying to channel every squat, shuttle run, and wind sprint Haru had put him through Hizashi sucked in a deep breath and kicked off as fast as he could manage with no lead. The rock was more sloped than he’d anticipated and the top edge of the fence caught him sharply in the gut as he jumped. Hizashi pushed himself up on trembling arms and rolled over the rest of the way with a sharp hissed swear. He half-hopped, half-fell to the ground on the other side in the skinny drainage gully between Iwata’s fence and the breezeblock wall of the neighbor behind him. He quickly stowed his mask in the bag with the drives and shook his hair out of his hood. He waited a moment, holding his breath to hear if anyone was coming to see what all the noise had been about. When no doors opened and the only voices seemed to be coming from the other side of the fence he had his back pressed to, he pulled his phone out again.

Same. @ urs 1 hr? he texted Aizawa back. That seemed like a reasonable amount of time to give Aizawa to become un-busy regardless of what he was up to. Killing time was a hassle but getting caught with his hand in the data access cookie jar was a bigger one by far. There was a short delay, then Aizawa’s answering 1hr which was so drenched in begrudging, self-pitying dread Hizashi could practically taste it. Hizashi allowed himself a quiet breath of relief and tucked his phone away, blinking hard to make his eyes readjust. He skittered down the uneven pavement at a crouch to avoid being seen, standing up straight to merge into the night time street traffic as he reached the sidewalk. Hizashi forced himself to relax into a casual slouch as he moved through the crowd despite the rough cough that followed his deep sigh of relief. He was going to sound like an absolute car crash in the morning, but the bag now back in his hand was full of at least six reasons for it to be worth it. Now all he had to do was head home for a quick costume change and gathering of supplies before he met up with Aizawa for some recreational information theft and property damage.

Shouta was checking his molars in his bathroom mirror when he heard the doorbell buzz. A couple of his teeth felt loose in his jaw after that knee to the face, but so far it didn’t look like any had cracked or come uprooted. He folded his ice pack over the side of his hand as he held it to his jaw, letting it cool the bandaged bite wound and his swollen face at the same time.

“Rough night?” Yamada asked as he opened the door, giving him an amused once-over. Despite his perpetual air of calm surety, Shouta noticed the hand holding his grubby canvas grocery bag over one shoulder was clenched around the straps tight enough to make his knuckles go white. “This shouldn’t take too long,” Yamada went on when Shouta didn’t reply. “Just tell me where I can set up and I’ll be in and out in no time flat.”

“No one said you were coming in here,” Shouta said shortly. He picked up the old toolbox that he had packed all of his most replaceable tools into and handed it unceremoniously to Yamada.”Don’t bother bringing it back. Have a good night.”

Yamada caught the door as Shouta tried to close it on him. He was stronger than he looked, Shouta thought as Yamada held the door back enough to let him wedge his foot in. “Just like that?” Yamada asked. His voice was full of lofty disapproval at Shouta’s poor manners, somewhat undercut by a tired raspiness beneath it. “Talk about hospitality.”

Shouta glowered at him. “You asked to borrow tools. They’re right there. Have a good night.” He managed to remove Yamada’s foot from the doorway but Yamada locked his elbow to keep the door from closing just yet.

“Well, yeah, technically,” he said, “but I’m not going to walk off with your stuff like some deadbeat neighbor. What kind of person do you think I am? On second thought, stupid question, never mind,” Yamada added quickly before Shouta could let him know exactly what kind of person he thought Yamada was. “Just think of this as, like, favor-point-five. Like when a test question has part A and part B, y’know? Hand to god, half an hour max and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Shouta sighed, not bothering to keep back the groan that crept in around the edges. “And this has nothing to do with the fire call from this evening?” he guessed flatly. Yamada’s answering head tilt was note-perfect curiosity with absolutely nothing behind the eyes.

“The what?”

“Forget it,” Shouta muttered, no energy left in him to continue this pointless bickering. He stepped back and let Yamada inside. Yamada breezed past him eagerly, taking half a moment to kick off his shoes as he went.

“So, where can I--aww, hey there buddy!” Yamada’s question cut off into a laughing coo. Shouta turned to see Mikey, his flamepoint ragdoll, in the process of climbing Yamada’s torso and settling in a cheerful puddle on his shoulders. Yamada buried his hands in Mikey’s fluffy side and nuzzled him back as the cat began to purr at top volume. Shouta felt a stab of annoyance that Mikey had decided to make friends with Yamada, despite knowing full well Mikey by nature made friends with everything within eyesight.

“Don’t be a pest,” Shouta said, half to Mikey and half to Yamada as he reclaimed his cat. Mikey instantly turned into an affectionate blob in Shouta’s arms, which soothed him somewhat.  Shouta gave him a quick snuggle before putting him down and trying to shoo him towards the bedroom. Mikey flopped over onto his back with a short, cheery request for belly rubs. “Idiot,” Shouta muttered affectionately, giving his fluffy belly a quick ruffle before turning back to Yamada.

Yamada looked stymied but like he was trying to quash a smile at the same time. Shouta raised an eyebrow at him.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Yamada said, shaking his head. “Just trying to regroup. You having a cat makes things slightly more complicated.”

Before Shouta could correct him, the automatic feeder in the corner went off. All three of Shouta’s cats came bolting down the hall at the sound of dinner being served, Mikey in the lead with Gingko and Kurotabi bringing up the rear. Yamada’s expression darkened another notch.

“This day just keeps getting better,” Yamada muttered with a tight grin.

“What do they have to do with whatever you need to get done?” Shouta asked. He almost hoped that making Yamada talk his plan through might tip him over into calling off “favor-point-five” and leaving. Unfortunately Yamada seemed to take it as Shouta showing interest instead, brightening at the question.

“Well, what I need to do right now is some pretty hardcore data management. We have to clear our backups twice a year and now’s the time,” Yamada said. “So I just need to wipe some of our older harddrives and drill a few holes in them just in case.”

“In case of what?” Shouta snorted, raising an eyebrow.

“In case someone shifty decides to recover sensitive data from them before they can be sent to the shredder,” Yamada replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “We have a whole room at the station that’s full of old junk tech, and if someone decided to sneak in and make off with a recoverable drive full of personal information about our guests it would be super bad news.” When Shouta still looked dubious, Yamada went on, “Celebrity stalkers are no joke, Aizawa. I’m not in the business of getting sued because some weirdo with a hard-on for Mount Lady decides to raid our studio for scraps.”

That did nothing to explain why the operations manager was in charge of the project rather than their IT department, why it was being done after hours and presumably off the clock, or why it had to be done right now in his apartment, but at this point Shouta was rapidly becoming less and less concerned with getting an honest answer out of Yamada. “Fine, whatever,” Shouta muttered, shaking his head. “This is already taking too long. You can use the entryway. I’ll run an extension cord for the drill.”

“Do you have a box maybe yey-big,” Yamada made a square with his hands about the size of a toaster oven, “and some styrofoam or something I can use to brace the drill? If one of these shatters I’d hate for the pieces to get around your kitties, y’know?”

“Probably,” Shouta sighed. “I’ll put up a couple gates so they won’t bother you.”

“Great, thanks.”

Putting Yamada into a small enclosed space with bars was probably more satisfying than it should have been, but Shouta was going to take his silver linings where he could find them. He had been expecting Yamada to keep up his usual chatterbox stream of consciousness monologue as he worked, but he was surprisingly quiet once he settled in to work. He sat hunched over his laptop or crouched over the box Shouta had found for him to do the drilling in, face blank in concentration and headphones blaring music to cover the sound of the drill. After a while the sound almost faded away into the background of Shouta’s own after-hours work, scanning through police blotters and adding tonight’s unspecified misdoing to his spreadsheet about Yamada.

The one thing Shouta had predicted correctly was Yamada’s underestimation of how long things were going to take. His own work distracted him long enough to not notice that an hour and half had passed, and he realized that and the fact that Yamada was still there and working at about the same time. Shouta approached the cat gate cage and cleared his throat. The half-assembled remains of two harddrives sat on top of one another next to Yamada as the progress bar on a third hooked into his laptop crept forward. Yamada’s head bobbed to the beat of whatever he was listening to, eyes focused almost unblinkingly on the document he was scrolling through. Shouta cleared his throat again with no reaction. He tapped two knuckles sharply against the bars of the gate and Yamada jumped, finally noticing he was there.

“Sorry, didn’t see you. What’s up?” Yamada asked. The rasp in his voice Shouta had noticed earlier seemed to have evolved into a painful, gravelly tone in the meantime.

“Wondering how long this is actually going to take,” Shouta said.

“Oh. Yeah, right,” Yamada said, flushing slightly. “It shouldn’t be too much longer, I think? These drives were reused somewhere along the way so I’m having to defrag them before I can get a clean wipe.” His voice wavered in and out as he spoke, and he punctuated the explanation with a hacking, phlegmy-sounding coughing fit.

“Are you sick?” Shouta asked, leaning away slightly. Yamada shook his head.

“No, I’m fine,” he said as he coughed into his sleeve. “Long day, not enough water, you know how it is.” He sounded scratchy and miserable despite the upbeat tone he seemed to be trying to cover it with.

“Do you want some tea or something?” Shouta didn’t know why he said it, and by the way Yamada blinked at him in open surprise he didn’t either.

“Oh, uh. I don’t want to be a bother or anything,” Yamada said awkwardly. Shouta snorted at that, holding back a retort about how so far this evening had proved that to be a blatant lie.

“Forget it. I could use a cup anyway. You take it straight?”

“No milk, but some honey would be nice if you have it. Sugar’s fine if you don’t. Um. Thanks,” Yamada said, still sounding grateful but bewildered by the offer.

The tea gave Shouta something to focus on other than the late hour and the lack of any deadline in sight. Mikey and Kurotabi followed him to the kitchen, expecting an after-dinner snack; Gingko, who had been patrolling the bottom gate and growling with all the intimidation a three-legged, one-eyed bobtail cat could muster every time Yamada moved too much for her liking, refused to give up her post even under the implied promise of extra food.. At least she had some taste in people, Shouta thought with a warm pride toward his angry calico youngest. He let Kurotabi sit on his feet and Mikey flop over his shoulders as he stood and waited for the electric kettle to boil and for the first time that night allowed himself a few minutes to relax and pretend his apartment was just his once again. It couldn’t last forever, though. Once the tea had steeped, Shouta took Yamada’s mug and his slightly crystalized bottle of honey into the living room.

“Here,” Shouta said, knocking the mug against the gate to get Yamada’s attention. The third drive appeared to have been finished and hastily reassembled while he was dawdling in the kitchen and the fourth was already whirring away next to the laptop. Shouta wondered if it was a coincidence or if Yamada was actually trying to live up to his timeframe this time.

“Thanks,” Yamada said, standing with a grunt to reach over the top of the double-stacked gates.

Shouta nodded, then went back to the couch with his own hot mug. Keeping half an eye on Yamada, Shouta watching in fascinated disgust as Yamada squeezed out an overflowing spoonful of honey, stuck it in his mouth, and tilted his head back to gargle it before swallowing; Yamada then squeezed out another spoonful, which he plopped down into his tea like that was just something you did. At least he had enough sense to not drink it straight out of the container, Shouta supposed. Yamada soon went back to his motionless fixation on his data wiping and drilling, occasionally interrupted by gulps of tea. Shouta settled in on the sofa, scrolling the usual pro hero gossip message boards he frequented to find new leads the police might be trying to keep quiet. If there was a scrap of controversy to be looked into, these fanatics would be the first to know and the first to blab.

Someone had started a new speculation thread about how Mockingbird’s newest lull in activity had to mean that he was planning something huge and truly diabolical this time. Shouta snorted and glanced over at Yamada, who was sipping tea and nodding along with something that sounded suspiciously like a dubstep remix of the Wii Shop Channel theme music. Truly, a force to be reckoned with. One of the more notorious troublemakers on the boards was making yet another stink about All Might being confirmed as sighted somewhere within Musutafu city limits and had two of their three threads locked by mods already; the third was in the process of being spammed to death by the usual memes and mockery that followed just about any claims of an undocumented All Might sighting. Shouta rolled his eyes, scrolling through photoshop after terrible photoshop to see if there was any actual intel to be had. If the internet was to be believed, All Might had transcended mere hero-hood to become some kind of omnipresent boogeyman for villains, able to be sighted and active in ten cities simultaneously. But anyone with half a brain knew that if someone that well-known and flashy has shown up anywhere near here, a dozen different tabloids would have fallen over themselves to confirm it by now; it was one of the few instances where absence of evidence and evidence of absence overlapped and frankly Shouta was glad for it. The last thing the city needed right now was some self-important big shot showing up and dragging the populace into their problems for the sake of some attention.

Hizashi’s back was on fire and his hands felt like they were about to snap in two but at long last all of the data had been transferred and all the drives were very, very broken. He’d only gotten to look at bits and snippets as he kept an eye on progress bars, but it seemed like Iwata had even more secret pots on the boil that Seguchi did. The list he’d shown Hizashi wasn’t a bunch of deadbeat debtors; as far as Hizashi could tell none of them had ever even met Iwata, much less owed him money. Instead it seemed to be a list of every adult male listed as single on his tax papers who had put in a downpayment on the mortgage for a condo or single-occupancy home in Musutafu in the last eight months. Seguchi had been supplying Iwata with the names piecemeal, and both he and Iwata had been pretty cagey about the specifics of its use in their emails to one another in case someone else had gotten ahold of them. Stopped clocks were right twice a day, Hizashi supposed with a frustrated sigh. They knew enough about their target to know he had just moved into the city, was single, and was a registered Pro Hero, but not enough to be able to put a face to the name. Or rather, a code name to a name. If they wanted to get to a Pro Hero, though, it would have been simpler to just put out a public challenge with vague details that sounded personal and specific and narrow their search according to who answered. It couldn’t be that hard; it was like writing a horoscope, except instead of trying to produce a paragraph of harmless fortune-telling you did your best to incite a fight to the death with every Scorpio you could find. Iwata had been adamant about keeping their work secret until they had solid ground to stand on, though, much to Seguchi’s obvious irritation. Their emails had become steadily more stiff and icy as time went on, all the way up until the point where Hizashi’s eyes had begun to cross and he decided to put the mystery aside and take his leave before Aizawa got really ticked off at him.

Hizashi hissed as sharp jolts of pain shot up and down his legs as he stood. “Well, that should be good for now,” he said cheerfully. Aizawa didn’t answer. Hizashi rolled his eyes. It might have been later than he’d intended to stay but that was no reason to get petty. When Aizawa continued to ignore Hizashi’s attempts at getting his attention, Hizashi wedged his fingers in between the bars of the top gate and popped the latch open. He caught it as it collapsed in on itself and set it against the wall before unlatching the one on the bottom as well. The small three-legged cat that had been his self-appointed prison warden all night stood at attention as he did so, letting out a warning growl as it stared him down with its single brown-green eye.

“Easy there,” Hizashi said, edging past the cat at as wide a berth as he could manage. “I come in peace, all right?” The cat seemed unconvinced, following him at a suspicious distance as he crossed the living room. “Hey, Aizawa, I think I’m--oh.”

Moving closer he realized Aizawa wasn’t ignoring him to be petty; the other man had fallen asleep on the couch, buried under his other two cats. Up close Aizawa looked exhausted, the deep insomniac bags under his eyes almost dark enough to match the swollen bruise under his chin. Running a double life was tiring work, no matter what side you fell on, Hizashi supposed. Aizawa’s phone had fallen from his grasp and come to rest in his empty tea mug; his arm flopped limply over the edge of the cushion just missing it, like he’d passed out midway through retrieving it. Hizashi snorted, plucking the phone out of the mug and using the hem of his shirt to wipe a smear of tea off of its screen. To his surprise, the phone unlocked at the halfhearted swipe without any kind of code or password required. For being such a stickler Aizawa was remarkably lackadaisical about the important things, Hizashi thought, shooting the unconscious man a judging glance. The last thing Aizawa had been looking at was some trashy-looking hero fanboy gossip site. Hizashi was about to just hit the power button and move on when something on the page caught his eye.

The thread he’d been scrolling was a long series of increasingly doctored images of All Might doing stereotypically touristy things around Musutafu. Some of them were well-made enough to almost look real, but the bulk of them were purposefully terrible, so zoomed in and deep-fried they were little more than a handful of pixels held together with duct tape. What they all had in common, however, was the username tagged in every post: shigarakitomura. Nothing quite like some good old-fashioned internet dogpiling, Hizashi thought with a frown, though a quick scroll of the user’s post history showed they were no stranger to bullheaded spam and moody fight-picking with other All Might-obsessed members of the boards themself. It was the name, though, that was jingling a small bell in the overtired emptiness of Hizashi’s brain. He went back to his laptop and typed in a quick keyword search in his files for the name Shigaraki. A slow smile crept across his face as a recalled email from Iwata to Seguchi popped up at once. The recalled version read for Seguchi to take care to make sure Shigaraki was kept in the dark about what they were hoping to find; the edited and re-sent version replaced the name with “certain overeager outside parties”. Hizashi grinned, looking over his shoulder at the dark-haired lump snoring away completely unaware in the next room.

“Shouta Aizawa, you are a genius.”

Shouta jolted awake to the sound of his alarm screaming at him. He groaned and fumbled for it, trying to swipe the snooze and buy himself a few more minutes of rest. His thumb slid over something square and papery, however, rather than the screen of his phone. Squinting one eye open, Shouta saw one of Yamada’s now-ubiquitous yellow sticky notes stuck to it.

You should be more careful with your phone. Code is 4632. -M

Shouta groaned, the night before coming back to him in a wave of rampant discomfort. He’d been trying to keep himself awake long enough to make sure Yamada left without a fuss, but somewhere between the hypnotic motion of scrolling and two very warm longhaired cats curling up on him sleep had kicked his legs out from under him. He unlocked his phone with the code Yamada had put on it and hit the snooze despite being irrevocably awake now. He rolled off the couch and dragged himself upright, wondering with no end of bitterness how long he had been dozing away in a completely unsecured apartment.

Hizashi frowned hard at his reflection in the common room mirror. His hair wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary but today wasn’t the day for “ordinary”. He sighed, fluffing it out of shape and then back in, hoping that would make it stop annoying him. It didn’t.

“I’m gonna shave my head,” he groused under his breath.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Nemuri replied from one of the nearby armchairs. “It’ll make your forehead look big. Well, bigger.”

Hizashi scowled at her through the mirror. “You always know just what to say,” he replied flatly. Nemuri blew him a kiss.

“Seriously, though, you look fine. Aizawa already thinks you’re a total cutie, you don’t have to try so hard,” she said.

Hizashi felt his face going red for the thousandth time that morning. As much as Nemuri seemed to think he and Aizawa were some kind of sure thing, the anxiety-riddled basilisk squirming in his gut had other opinions. If Aizawa was just some random good samaritan Hufflepuff he’d met a week ago, he could have shaken off his jitters and still had a great day in the village whether they ended up clicking with one another or not.

But Shouta Aizawa wasn’t just a Hufflepuff, he was the Hufflepuff. He had been ever since he’d glanced across the table during a blended Potions class their third year, diagnosed Hizashi’s disastrous mixture as being the result of the nettle extract not emulsifying, and suggested he mix both clockwise and counterclockwise to make it come together before returning to his own work without another word. That had been the first time in three years of Potions lessons that Hizashi’s sample had come out right without at least a half dozen revisions, and like a song from a genre you never thought you’d like, Aizawa had been stuck in Hizashi’s head ever since. Hizashi had tried to thank him for it a thousand times, but could never manage to tamp down the nauseous mix of intimidation and infatuation that bubbled up in his stomach the moment the two of them made eye contact. Not until Aizawa had risked literal life and limb to rescue Hizashi from his own inattentiveness and the infatuation momentarily won control of his tongue, anyway.    

“Oi, Yamada.” Nemuri snapped her fingers in front of his nose, jogging him out of his thoughts. Hizashi blinked and looked over at her.

“Sorry, yeah, what?” he said. Nemuri gave him a sympathetic smile despite her raised eyebrow and took his face in her hands.

“Look me in the eye and listen close, okay? This boy is crazy about you. He jumped out of the stands to save you from a nerfed Bludger during a school-sanctioned Quidditch match. He wants. To smooch. Your face,” Nemuri said, squishing his cheeks to punctuate.

The thought of not just hanging out with but kissing Aizawa hadn’t occured to Hizashi until now, and it sent a whole new sharp flip through the pit of his stomach. His face burned and prickled like it was trying to flush and grow pale at the same time. “I think I’m gonna barf. Thanks, Nems,” Hizashi said weakly.

“Hey, it worked for him, didn’t it?” Nemuri pointed out, standing on tiptoe to give him a peck on the forehead. “Now stop stalling and go get your man.” She took him by the shoulders and turned him towards the door, giving him an encouraging swat on the backside to get him moving. Hizashi took a deep breath, squared his shoulders as best he could despite his whole body feeling like it was going to shake apart, and forced himself to start walking.

Aizawa was already waiting for him on one of the courtyard benches. Hizashi felt a little overdressed in the skinny jeans, concert teeshirt, and sleek leather jacket he had pestered Nemuri into helping him pick out as he took in the scuffed cuffs of Aizawa’s faded black jeans and the well-worn thumb holes in the sleeves of his hoodie. Aizawa looked like he’d rolled out of bed looking effortlessly cool and casual, slouched forward with his free elbow on his knee and his attention buried in a paperback novel he’d folded in half so that he could read it one-handed. Hizashi swallowed hard, his throat dry and his palms starting to sweat.

C’mon, Yamada, this is no time to be gutless, he reminded himself sternly. “Hey!” he called to Aizawa. It came out louder than he had really intended, echoing in the mostly-empty courtyard. As with everything, though, Aizawa took the noisy greeting in stride. He looked up from his book, shaking hair out of his face, and unfolded himself from the bench as Hizashi strode over.

“Morning,” Aizawa replied with a nod.

“Sorry if you were waiting long,” Hizashi said with an awkward laugh. “I was, ah. Um. Sorry.”

Aizawa shrugged. “I don’t mind,” he said, holding up his book as evidence before stuffing it into his back pocket. “I think most people already went on ahead,” he added. “We should get going before the pub gets too crowded.”

“Sure, yeah,” Hizashi agreed.

Neither of them spoke much on the way down to the village. The short walk seemed to grow longer and longer the more Hizashi tried to think of ways to fill it. He wished he’d spent less time picking Nemuri’s brain about what he should wear and more about what people actually did on dates. His brief middle school romance with her in his second year followed by several years of long-distance crushing on someone he had been too terrified to speak to had left him severely underprepared. He was pretty sure holding hands was a thing, but was it a first date thing? Maybe not this soon after meeting up with the other person. Conversation was the most obvious answer but a vast chasm of blank nothing opened in his brain the moment Hizashi tried to think of something to say.

“You like the Weird Sisters?” The question silenced the panicked claxons going off in Hizashi’s brain instantly. “Your shirt,” Aizawa went on when Hizashi just stared at him without answering. Hizashi reflexively glanced down like he’d somehow forgotten what he was wearing, then nodded with a sheepish grin.

“Yeah, they’re cool,” he said. “My sister Haruko was super into them when we were kids and it kind of rubbed off on me. We went to their show in London last summer for her birthday, that’s where I got this,” he added, tugging at the hem of his shirt. “How ‘bout you?”

Aizawa nodded. “They’re one of my favorite bands,” he said.

“Really?” Hizashi asked, secretly thrilled that they’d already found something to agree on.

“Yeah. I’ve never gotten to see them live, though. Kinda jealous.” Aizawa flashed a sliver of a smirk that made Hizashi’s heart seize hard in his chest.

“We should go together sometime!” Hizashi blurted out before he could stop himself. He flushed as a few people ahead of them glanced back to see what all the noise was about. Aizawa, though, grinned again and shrugged his uninjured shoulder.

“Yeah, maybe,” he half-agreed. His face was mostly hidden behind his hair, but Hizashi could have sworn he was blushing too.

As predicted, the main room of The Three Broomsticks was packed with students and staff getting in one last relaxed moment before the end-of-year exam crunch began. The two of them put in their orders at the bar, then sought out one of the last remaining open tables.

“I’ve never seen so many people trying not to make eye contact at one time before,” Aizawa commented as he looked around the pub. Hizashi laughed.

“It’s like avoiding the T-Rex in Jurassic Park,” he joked. “If nobody moves, the students can’t beg for extra credit and the profs can’t remind you about your career counselling appointments.”

“Terrifying,” Aizawa said dryly.

“It is for me,” Hizashi admitted with a laugh. “I’m pretty sure Torino’s going to run me down the next time I tell him I still don’t know what I want to do after graduation.”

As if to prove his point there came a badly-muffled snicker from a couple tables away. Hizashi glanced over to see Professors Torino and Shimura along with Shimura’s TA Toshinori Yagi commiserating over drinks and stacks of grading. All three waved, Torino with a somewhat more meaningful smile than the other two. Hizashi felt himself flush and gave a vague flail of his hand in return before quickly looking away.

“See?” he said, turning back to Aizawa. Aizawa gave a kind of “well, when you put it that way” half-nod, half-shrug.

“I assumed you were going to be a professional Seeker somewhere,” Aizawa said. “Slytherin’s been unbeatable ever since you joined the team. With your talent you could easily get scouted for at least a semi-pro league right out of school.”

He said it without any hint of flattery or exaggeration in his voice, like it was simply an immutable, commonly known fact; water was wet, the sky was blue, and as far as Aizawa was concerned Hizashi had what it took to be a pro Seeker. Hizashi tried to cover the flustered catch in his throat by grinning and miming flipping his hair over his shoulder.

“Well, obviously,” he joked. “But...I dunno. I think if I’m gonna to do something for the rest of my life it should be something I’m gonna have fun doing, y’know? And the most fun part about playing Quidditch is getting to hang out and play with Nemuri and the others,” he said. “If I can figure out a way to group all of my friends together into a new league for just us I might consider it, but it doesn’t look like that’ll happen anytime soon.” Hizashi laughed apologetically, suddenly worried he might be straying too far into “Oversharing My Insecurities” territory for this early in the day. He was saved the additional discomfort of backpedaling by their lunch arriving. Looking at food made his stomach double-knot but he tried his best to not show it.

“How about you? What do you want to do after you’re out of school?” Hizashi asked, dumping too much ketchup on his fries as an alternative to eating them.

Aizawa shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t really know either,” he admitted with a slightly grudging tone to his voice. “Shirakumo keeps telling me I should become a teacher, but I’m not sure.”

“Oh yeah? I think you’d be good at it,” Hizashi said, thoughts of a solemn-eyed thirteen-year-old saving him from certain disaster drifting through his head. “You’re one of the top brains in the year and you’ve definitely got the guts for it. My sister Hinako’s studying to be a linguistics instructor and she always says all you need to be a good teacher is a high tolerance for bullshit and enough raw nerve to tell someone to fuck off without stammering.”

To Hizashi’s surprise and delight Aizawa let out a sharp bark of laughter at that, clapping his hand over his mouth to muffle it a split second later. Hizashi beamed, a swell of pride growing in his chest at getting Aizawa to break character, even momentarily. “I thought you said your sister’s name was Haruko,” Aizawa said, clearing his throat around another laugh.

“Other sister,” Hizashi clarified. “Haru and Hinako are the older twins, they graduated two years ago. My brother Hiro and my sibling Hoshi are the younger twins, they’ll be ten in August.”

Aizawa stared at him, dumbfounded. “You have four siblings?” he asked with the kind of wonder-filled shock that picked him out instantly as an only child. Hizashi grinned.

“Yep,” Hizashi said, nodding. “Middle child of five, and the only single birth on either side of the family for, like, two or three generations back. Haru swears I ate my twin in the womb so I wouldn’t have to share a birthday.” About halfway through he had the too-late realization that the joke might not be funny outside of his family, but to his relief Aizawa let out a hard snort at it.

“Not a bad plan,” Aizawa said.

Hizashi shrugged. “It worked,” he said. “So what d’you think you’d teach if you did end up back here?” he added.

“Muggle Studies,” Aizawa said. The way he said it without any hesitation made Hizashi wonder if he was actually as reluctant about the idea as he claimed.

“That’s cool,” Hizashi said, nodding. “I took Muggle Studies as an elective third year but I ended up dropping it before fourth. It wasn’t terrible or anything, it was just kind of. Um.” He tried to think of a nice way to phrase the fact that he had maintained a perfect grade in the class while using it as an extra study hall.

“Boring?” Aizawa suggested flatly. Hizashi flushed.

“I wasn’t going to say that,” he hedged. Aizawa sighed, shaking his head.

“No, I’ve taken three years of it, I know it is,” he said. “The curriculum might be Ministry approved, but that doesn’t save it from being complete garbage. No matter who the teacher is it’s always some Pureblood, and they just stand at the front of the class acting like it’s some incredible miracle that Muggles managed to invent solutions to problems without magic to help them.”

Hizashi nodded; that sounded about right from the hazy half-forgotten memories he could dredge up.

“If they had any sense, they’d have someone who knows what they’re talking about teaching and it would be part of the core classes in first and second year. Then it would actually make sense to let you decide if you want to stick with it as an elective,” Aizawa went on. “That way the kids who don’t know anything about non-magic technology will learn alternatives for when they run into something magic can’t fix. The way it is now just ties everyone down to a single way of thinking with no alternatives until after they’re used to relying on magic for everything anyway. It’s completely illogical.” He grew more animated as he spoke, eyes bright and spots of enthusiastic color rising in his cheeks. This was the most Hizashi had ever heard Aizawa say at one time and he was enraptured by the sudden force in Aizawa’s voice. To his disappointment Aizawa seemed to realize he was getting riled up and deflated slightly, sinking back into his usual neutral holding pattern.

“But that’s just the Muggleborn in me, I guess,” he muttered.

“Nah, your plan sounds way better to me,” Hizashi said encouragingly, trying to pep him back up. “If I was gonna send my kids here, I’d be way more likely to suggest they take your class than if it stays like it is now.”

Some of the glow seemed to come back behind Aizawa’s eyes and the corner of his mouth twitched up into almost a smile. “Noted.”

Their conversation hit a short lull as they finished lunch and headed back outside to the main street, but the silence felt less disquieting now that the ice had broken. Hizashi was used to being around constant noise, growing up in a family of extroverts and living in a House where half the residents were in a constant duel of one-upsmanship with the other half. Being around Aizawa, though, was like hanging out with the human form of a comfortable silence. Bits of short conversation passed between them as they ambled, happening and ending in a breezy ebb and flow.

Aizawa stopped in at the used bookstore to trade the book he’d been reading--or rather, re-reading for the third time, as he told Hizashi--for the next in the series, which was even thicker and more battered than the last. At some curious prodding from Hizashi, Aizawa began to give a synopsis of the books up to the current volume. His energy from before returned, but in a lighter tone bordering on excitability as he explained the truly surreal level of bad luck that seemed to be constantly befalling Simon Snow and his friends. Aizawa talked like someone who held his words in as long as he could when he didn’t think it was appropriate to use them, but couldn’t help the way they spilled out when given the chance. Reserved, Hizashi thought. Not so much the taciturn, easily bored loner his reputation presupposed, just more comfortable keeping to himself when he wasn’t sure the other person was actually interested. Hizashi counted himself as fully interested despite having only a vague idea of what Aizawa was talking about. He was more than content to just walk slow circuits of Hogsmeade next to Aizawa as he monologued, sharing a bag of black licorice from Honeydukes that Hizashi had bought and offered without thinking and Aizawa (to Hizashi’s private delight) had accepted without hesitation.

The two of them perched on the fence around the Shrieking Shack, giving their feet a rest as Aizawa went on a fascinating tangent about the books’ author getting investigated on suspicion of illegal experimentation because their fictional magic system was too water-tight. Aizawa fell silent mid-sentence, blinking in surprise, and rubbed at something on his nose.

“What--” Hizashi started, but his question was answered as three large raindrops plopped down onto his face as well. “Well, crap,” he added, squinting up into the murky grey sky and getting rewarded with another drop on his forehead.

In unison the two of them hopped down off the fence and began to quickly walk back down the lane towards the row of shops. The rain picked up its pace with them, turning from a sprinkling to a drizzle to a full-bore downpour as they rushed back. Hizashi pulled his jacket up, doing his best to keep it over their heads as they scampered for shelter. A distant growl of thunder followed them as they darted past the flat front of the post office building to the sanctuary of the bookshop’s awning.

“Perfect time for the sky to open, huh?” Hizashi laughed, using the display window to try to slick his soaked hair back into a decent style. When Aizawa didn’t reply, Hizashi paused to look over at him. Aizawa wasn’t under the awning anymore; glancing around the corner into the alley between buildings Hizashi saw him crouched down prodding at something next to a trash bin. Hizashi deployed his makeshift umbrella again and hurried over to see what had caught Aizawa’s attention. Drawing level with him, Hizashi saw that Aizawa was pulling at the melting top flaps of a cardboard box, trying to keep them open as they collapsed inwards. The word “free” was just barely visible scrawled in marker on the front of the box and peering inside Hizashi could see the small trembling body of a kitten. It was hard to tell what color the poor thing was under the dirt and bits of cardboard that had fallen in and stuck to its fur. The kitten made struggling attempts to paw at Aizawa’s hand, giving off long pennywhistle yowls at the top of its voice.

“I think it’s stuck on something, but I can’t get to it,” Aizawa said over his shoulder.

Hizashi squatted down next to him to get a better look. Sure enough, he could see where the rubber band serving as the kitten’s collar had tangled in a stray thread from the tea towel that had been stuffed into the box to serve as a bed. The towel was fully soaked and melded with the bottom of the box, becoming a sodden weight around the kitten’s neck. As Aizawa reached in to help, the collapsing box and having to use his off hand made him awkward and clumsy and the kitten kept dodging away from the perceived attack from above.

“Let me try,” Hizashi said. He shrugged off his jacket and balanced it on both of their heads to free up his hands. “Easy there, tiny,” he added to the kitten in as soothing a voice as he could, slowly reaching into the box. The kitten squawked and squirmed at the indignity of being gently scruffed in one hand while Hizashi tugged the rubber band from around its neck with the other. “There. Not so bad, was it?” Hizashi asked, doing what he could to wipe some of the cardboard flecks off of its head. The kitten peeped irritably and gave a hard full-body shiver. “Let’s get somewhere drier,” Hizashi suggested.

Aizawa noded. He unzipped his sweatshirt and bundled the kitten into the pocket of fabric caused by his immobilized arm, then zipped it up again most of the way. The two of them--three now technically--made back under the bookstore’s awning just as a new wave of rain came down. Hizashi shivered as a stream of cold water ran out of his hair and down the back of his neck.

“Looks like that’s it on today,” he said, watching as the last few stragglers other than themselves fled the street for somewhere dry.

“Guess so,” Aizawa agreed. He had opened his jacket just a little again and was letting the kitten attack his finger, gnawing at his knuckle with the two stubby baby teeth it had. He gave a quiet, delighted chuckle, pulling his finger away to scratch under its chin. It was the first time Hizashi had ever seen him look truly relaxed, no hint of his usual stiff practicality as he looked down at the ball of fluff tucked into his elbow. Hizashi couldn’t help the warm glow that spread through him at seeing such a gentle smile on Aizawa’s face. Aizawa had to quickly muffle a sneeze in his shoulder as water dripped from his hair onto his nose. He tried to shake his hair back but only succeeded in sticking more strands to his cheeks in the process.

“Here,” Hizashi said, reaching out a hand to smooth Aizawa’s hair back behind his ears. Aizawa looked over at him with the same easy, soft smile still on his face.

“Thanks,” he said. Hizashi was too caught off guard and suddenly tongue-tied to reply. Instead, half on instinct and half on impulse Hizashi leaned in and kissed him.

It was brief and a little awkward from the inopportune angle he had to take to avoid leaning on Aizawa’s injured arm and the kitten, but for the moment it happened it was glorious. Hizashi pulled back, heart hammering at his own nerve. Aizawa had gone stock-still, his eyes owlishly wide and his face blank as he stared at Hizashi. He blinked once, hard, as if he was trying to process what had just happened. Then a dark flush spread through his face and his head snapped down to stare at his shoes. A cold, guilty weight dropped into the pit of Hizashi’s stomach. His mouth worked open and shut around words of apology or explanation or both that didn’t want to form. Hizashi forced his jaw shut, clearing his throat around the knot trying to form and looking back out into the rain.

“We should probably get back to the castle. It doesn’t look like it’s going to let up any time soon,” Aizawa muttered, not taking his eyes off of his sneakers.

“Y-Yeah, probably. I, uh, I think I saw them selling umbrellas inside, I’ll go check. Be right back,” Hizashi jabbered on.

He ducked past Aizawa and into the bookstore. Aizawa’s red-faced non-reaction was not at all what he’d been hoping for. In the golden high of the moment Hizashi had thought it was kind of sweeping and spontaneous, if not outright romantic, but now common sense was setting in on him with a vengeance. He grimaced, grabbing the first novelty pocket umbrella he saw on the store’s display rack and taking it up to the front to pay. He was an utter idiot, of course something like that was going too fast. They might have clicked for the most part during the day but that didn’t mean he could go around smashing his face against Aizawa’s willy-nilly. Nemuri’s assurance that Aizawa did in fact want to “smooch his face” came floating back but Hizashi shook it away. In a general sense maybe, but not now out of nowhere with no provocation. Hizashi tried to console himself that Aizawa didn’t seem to be angry with him at least, but even that fell flat. With how good the other boy was at hiding his feelings he could have been angry to the boiling point right now and Hizashi would never be able to tell. He’d have to apologize, sincerely and quickly, that was all there was to it. As soon as they got a free minute back at the castle without distractions or onlookers Hizashi would explain and apologize and hope he hadn’t utterly ruined any chance he had at least staying friends.

Aizawa hadn’t decided to leave without him, which felt encouraging; he also didn’t make eye contact as Hizashi opened the umbrella over their heads and they started walking, which felt less so. As they approached the school gates, Aizawa zipped his jacket up all the way under his chin and rested his free arm on top of the arm in the sling, his hand on the kitten’s back to keep it still and quiet. He looked calm and assured, eyes trained forward and face neutral as they passed the teachers monitoring the groups scuttling in out of the rain. No one batted an eye at them the whole way inside and down the stairs towards the dungeons.

“Smooth,” Hizashi commented under his breath. The corner of Aizawa’s mouth quirked up just slightly.

“Not my first time,” he replied in an undertone.

He led the way to one of the lower-level bathrooms and locked the door behind the two of them after confirming they were in there alone. “Can you run some water?” Aizawa asked, pointing at the row of sinks with his elbow as he scooped the shivering kitten out of its hiding place. “Just warm, not hot. There should be spare towels in the cupboard, they usually don’t run out until later in the week.”

Hizashi did as he asked, running a shallow bath of water and gently setting the kitten down into it. Aizawa hovered at his elbow, giving instructions on how to test the temperature so that it wouldn’t be too much for the kitten to handle and how to scrub the grime away from its fur without getting soap near its eyes or ears. Slowly but surely a small white tom kitten with a thick stripe of tabby orange down its back emerged from under all of the muck. Washed and dried and swaddled in a fresh hand towel, the kitten’s eyes blinked sleepily shut as Aizawa held him cradled in his elbow again.

“What’s his name gonna be?” Hizashi asked. He reached out and ruffled the tuft of fur between the kitten’s ears with the tip of one finger as he began to snore. Aizawa frowned, shaking his head.

“He’s not mine. I couldn’t leave him out there, but I don’t think my Housemates would appreciate it if I took in another stray,” Aizawa said grudgingly.

“No room for a common room cat?”

“We have three already,” Aizawa said sheepishly. “Well, two. Mikey was mine to start with.”

Hizashi grinned in spite of himself, remembering Aizawa’s comment about this not being his first smuggling operation. “If he was a little bigger we could probably just let him loose to be a mouser, but right now I’m pretty sure the mice would win,” he said.

“Whoever does take him will have to coddle him for a while,” Aizawa said. “He’s not actually old enough to be on his own, no matter what the scumbag who abandoned him thinks.”

That sparked an idea in Hizashi that made his grin grow even wider. “I think I have just the person,” he said. “Follow me.”

“Oh Nem-my,” Hizashi said in a singsong voice, leaning down over the back of the sofa Nemuri was stretched out on. Nemuri looked up from the book she’d been reading, seeming surprised to see him.

“Back already?” she asked. “I assumed you’d still be off somewhere sucking face with Aiza--”

“It started raining so we came back early,” Hizashi said quickly, trying to drown her out as his ears burned. “Not the point. I brought you a present.” He reached down and booped her on the nose.

Nemuri looked dubiously up at him. “If it’s another half-finished bag of licorice, I’m locking you out of the dorms for a week,” she replied sweetly, booping him back.

“That was one time. And joke’s on you anyway, I’ve found someone with taste,” Hizashi said. He nodded towards Aizawa. Nemuri sat up to see where he was looking. She nodded hello to Aizawa, then looked back over at Hizashi.

“Mind telling me why there’s a Hufflepuff in my common room?” she asked.

“Because, I brought you a present,” Hizashi repeated. “Close your eyes and hold out your hands.”

A look of deep skepticism crossed her face, but Nemuri did as he asked. Hizashi took the towel-wrapped kitten from Aizawa and placed it in Nemuri’s hands, guiding her arms to her chest to make sure she was supporting the little bundle.

“All right, open them!”

Nemuri squinted open one eye, grimacing like she was bracing for impact. Her whole face lit up as she saw what had been put in her arms. “Look at you!” she said breathlessly, cradling the kitten. The kitten squeaked up at her as the sound of her voice jostled him out of his nap.

“Aizawa found him caught in the rain while we were out,” Hizashi explained. “Aizawa’s full up on cats and Ai-chan’s enough for me, but I thought since you had to leave Oni home this year you might want to look after the little guy.”

Nemuri tried to put on a begrudging, put-upon expression, but her obvious adoration leaked through around the edges. “I mean, if there’s no one else I might as well,” she said in a faux-haughty voice. “Can’t leave him on his own, can we?” Her sentence trailed off into a sweet baby-talk tone as she directed it more towards the kitten.

“He’s still too young for solid food. You’ll need to feed him soft food and bottles until his teeth come in,” Aizawa said. He pulled out the top drawer of a nearby side table and ran his wand around the edge of it, muttering a spell under his breath. He reached into the shallow drawer up to his elbow, retrieving a few small baby bottles and a canister of powdered kitten formula. He sat down next to Nemuri on the couch and talked her through all of the steps to prepare bottles and how to support the kitten while he ate. Again the cool detachment melted away as Aizawa spoke and his more passionate side peeked out. He explained everything in simple, direct instructions with the kind of calm competency and depth of knowledge that made Hizashi wonder how Aizawa could ever doubt he was meant to teach. Even Hizashi’s haughty black cat Ai-chan seemed impressed with him; she hopped up into Aizawa’s lap as he was speaking and forewent her usual first impression greeting of a sharp nip on the hand, content to accept a lengthy backscratch from him instead.

“If you have time between classes to come check on him while he settles in, it would be best,” Aizawa finished up.

“Right,” Nemuri said, nodding. “A baby’s a baby, even if it’s got four feet and a fur coat.” She smiled down at the kitten as he finished his meal and flopped down onto his full belly with a yawn.

“So, what’re you gonna call him, Nems?” Hizashi asked, relieved his plan had worked.

“Sushi,” Nemuri said instantly.

Hizashi laughed. “Big bro Onigiri will be thrilled,” he teased.

“He’ll adore him,” Nemuri agreed primly. “Now go take your Hufflepuff somewhere else so we can take a nap in peace,” she added, making a shooing motion towards the door.

“Rude. I give you a kitten and all you give me is lip.”

“Don’t make me call a hall meeting about fraternization, Hizashi Yamada.”

“Fine, fine,” Hizashi said, holding his hands up peacefully. “Sheesh. You give someone a Prefect badge and suddenly they own the place,” he added in a loud mutter, rolling his eyes dramatically.

“What was that? You’ll have to speak up, my Plebeian is rusty,” Nemuri said in a lofty voice.

“Don’t worry about it, Nems, have a good nap,” Hizashi said. “C’mon, I’ll walk you out,” he added to Aizawa, nodding towards the door.

“Nice meeting you,” Nemuri said to Aizawa as he got up to leave.

“Er. You too,” Aizawa returned with a nod.

Nemuri popped her head up over the back of the couch as Hizashi held the door open for Aizawa. She grinned at him, waggling her eyebrows meaningfully. Hizashi gave her a short, tight smile in return and flashed a weak thumbs-up before he followed Aizawa out. The common room door shut with a snap behind him, sounding louder than it needed to in the empty hall. The two of them hovered awkwardly, the last buffer between what had happened before and where they should go from here now safely tucked away behind them.

“She seems nice,” Aizawa said finally.

Hizashi gave a weak chuckle. “Nemuri can be kind of extra, but she’s cool,” he assured him. “She was pretty gutted when she had to leave her cat at home this year but he’s about ten billion years old, so she couldn’t really help it. I think she’ll be a good cat mom for that little guy.”

“Yeah, I think so too,” Aizawa said.

A second silence stretched on longer than the first, as if they were both waiting for the other one to take the next step. Aizawa cleared his throat and seemed to be about to excuse himself. Hizashi forced himself to speak before Aizawa left.

“H-Hey, um. About before,” he blurted out. Aizawa hesitated, his expression guarded. “When...When I kissed you. I just wanted to say I’m sorry?” Hizashi said, hating the way his voice cracked upward at the end. “It’s just. Today’s been so great and I’d never seen you look so happy like that before and I guess I kind of...got ahead of myself. Not that that’s an excuse or anything!” he interrupted himself quickly, wishing he could just shut up and say what he meant for once. He took a deep breath, raking a hand through his hair, and tried to rally his thoughts. “What I’m trying to say is I really, really like you and today has been totally amazing, and I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable and screwed all of that up.” Hizashi gritted his teeth, bracing for what would come next.

To his surprise, instead of agreeing that the kiss had been uncalled for and requesting that Hizashi keep his distance going forward, Aizawa just looked quietly confused. “I-- That’s not it at all,” he said.

Hizashi felt the heavy lump in his chest break apart into a flock of hopeful butterflies. “N-No?” he sputtered, not sure what else to say.

“No. I really like you too,” Aizawa said, sounding a little breathless with the effort of making himself say it out loud. “And today has been great. Earlier, I just. A lot was happening all at once, and then you seemed kind of embarrassed about it so I didn’t want to make it worse by bringing it up. But I didn’t not like it. It was a nice surprise.” The soft smile was back, accompanied by a quiet self-deprecating chuckle as Aizawa reflexively ducked his head and rubbed the side of his neck.

Hizashi’s face was on fire and his chest was so full of fluttering thrills of energy he felt like he might start floating away at any second. “Oh. Cool!” he said, mouth running off into the distance and leaving his brain to catch up a moment later. He winced hard, wanting very much to disappear into the bricks of the corridor wall and never be seen again, but the snorty chuckle Aizawa let out pulled him back. Aizawa hesitated a moment, then braced his hand on Hizashi’s shoulder as he leaned in and kissed him.

A million panicky thoughts about what to do with his hands, nose, face, everything flashed through Hizashi’s head in a split second before being wiped out of existence by the singular thought that Shouta Aizawa was kissing him, and it was awesome. Both of them lingered in the kiss, no one around to interrupt and neither wanting to be the first to pull away. Finally Aizawa leaned back, a full-blown cheshire cat grin on his face.

“Cool,” he agreed. He bit his lip, then said, “My common room is probably going to stay pretty empty until later, even with the weather. We could go sit by the fire and talk some more, if you wanted?” He said it like there would be any question in Hizashi’s mind that today should keep going as long as possible.

“Yeah! I mean, if you’re sure that’s okay?” Hizashi asked, thinking of all of the rumors he’d heard about the intense security around the Hufflepuff dorms.

Aizawa shrugged. “Fair’s fair, right? If Kayama’s going to lecture us about fraternizing we might as well deserve it.”

Three days later and Aizawa had yet to make contact. Hizashi frowned to himself, watching the dark subway walls speed past the train’s window. He kept having to remind himself to not pick at the cork stoppering the bottle of wine in his lap but his hands grew fiddly and nervous when his mind wandered too far back towards the vigilante’s radio silence. What was the reason behind it? Was he trying to force Hizashi into contacting him instead as some kind of lazy entrapment attempt? Hizashi couldn’t bring himself to believe that. Aizawa was a lot of things but half-assed wasn’t one of them. If he wanted to get to Hizashi he would make sure he did so in the middle of something he could use to nail Hizashi to the wall. If he followed that thought to the logical end, however, Aizawa protecting him made even less sense; it would have been the perfect opportunity to drag Hizashi to the cops by the collar like a self-satisfied house cat bringing its owner a dead pigeon. Why would someone so careful in everything otherwise make such a glaring error and then spend three silent days failing to do anything about it? Aizawa was a mystery of motivation; every time Hizashi thought he’d gotten a handle on the type of person he was, something new came along to prove him wrong. Hizashi grimaced and shook himself mentally as the train slowed at his stop, tugging his thumbnail out of the rut he had carved into the top of the cork. He’d been chasing himself in circles all week, and now wasn’t the time to throw himself back into the spiral.

Standing in front of the apartment door, Hizashi took a minute to center himself with a deep breath and fixed his expression into a relaxed-ish smile before knocking. The chatter of conversation on the other side quieted as footsteps approached. There was a short pause, then the door swung wide to reveal his mother’s elated face.

“Hizashi!” she exclaimed. Before he could return the greeting, her expression fell into one of shocked concern. “Oh my god, what happened to you?”

“Mm? Oh, this,” Hizashi said with a forced chuckle. He cleared his throat and tried to sound nonchalant about his half-healed double black eye and two-inch headwound as he rattled off the cover story he’d been practicing for this moment. “I, uh, tripped over a couple of trash bags behind the studio, ended up clocking myself on a dumpster,” he said, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. “Real graceful, huh?”

“Heavens,” his mother said as she ushered him inside. “You went to the ER and got checked out, right? Head injuries like that can turn nasty out of nowhere.”

“Yeah, Ma, I took care of it,” Hizashi said, giving her an appreciative kiss on the cheek. “Didn’t really have a choice, actually, the night delivery guy found me out cold in the alley and called an ambulance. I think I might have traumatized the poor guy.”

“With a face like that how could you not?” Haru teased as Hizashi came into the kitchen to set down the wine. She took the bottle from him before giving him a quick, tight hug. “Good to see you, Zash.”

“You’re heartless but I love you anyway,” Hizashi replied, squeezing her back.

“Whatever, we both know I’m the cute one,” Haru said. She pulled back and gently prodded him in the chest with her ladle. “Now go mingle, I’ve got a curry to keep from burning.”

“Yes’m,” Hizashi said with a salute.

“If it isn’t everyone’s favorite problem child back from the dead!” Hizashi’s sibling Hoshi said in mock surprise as Hizashi dropped into one of the empty living room chairs. “It’s lucky you showed up, Zash, Hitoshi and I were about to ro-sham-bo for who gets your cat.”

Hizashi turned a grin on his nephew, who was perched on the arm of the sofa next to his mothers. “If you can get Ai-chan to leave the apartment with all your limbs intact, you’re welcome to her, Shortstack,” he said.

“Don’t you even think about it, Hitoshi Shinsou,” his mother Mara said, nudging her son in the leg to reclaim his attention from the video he was watching on his phone. “If I wanted a pet chainsaw, I’d live in a hardware store.”

Hitoshi snorted. “Don’t worry, Mama, I’d rather step on a beartrap than make that cat do anything. Baji can have her,” he replied, punctuating with a “have at it” gesture to Hoshi.

“Yes!” Hoshi said, pumping their fist in the air. “Dibs on the attack gremlin maintained!”

“Are we just ignoring the fact that I’m not actually dead, or…?” Hizashi asked, crossing his arms and trying not to smile as he arched an eyebrow at his sibling.

“I mean, at this point we kind of have to,” his sister Hinako said from the other side of her wife. “Mara and I claimed your TV and that fancy toaster oven Mom and Dad got you for Christmas last year, Haruko gets your new laptop and router, and Hiro beat everyone else out in the tournament for your apartment lease. Ai-chan was the last thing we had to divvy up.”

“You guys are the absolute worst,” Hizashi said, trying and failing to keep a straight face as he said it. “I take time out of my busy schedule of being attacked by trash bags and getting bullied by my cat and this is the thanks I get?”

“Truly, we aren’t worthy,” Haru said from behind him, ruffling his hair. “Time to set the table, busy boy, Mom said Dad’s almost home.”

Dinner with his family was like finally being allowed to exhale after months of holding his breath. Deep down he’d known having to isolate himself from them to prevent them from getting wrapped up in things had weighed on him, but the full extent of it didn’t hit him until here and now. It took less time than Hizashi had expected to get back into the flow of the family conversation, a chaotic blend of speech, signing, and the kind of sweeping gestures that came from being raised by an opera singer and a very emphatic law professor. The constant sting of edginess that kept him from ever really relaxing melted away to nothing, no match for the rapid-fire retellings of weird life moments and accompanying bouts of breathless laughter from around the table.

“Speaking of tired,” his father said, bouncing off the tail end of a story Hiro had told about a toddler at his daycare center who had somehow gifted three other children and one of his coworkers with a combination of chicken pox and flu, “you’re looking a little wilted, Shortstack. High school applications getting to you?”

“Actually, Hitoshi has some news about that he was going to share tonight,” Hinako said. She beamed over at her son, giving him an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder. Hitoshi cleared his throat, the look of someone who had hoped they weren’t going to have to talk in front of people written plain on his face. Hizashi gave a sympathetic wince; growing up as an introvert in a family full of dramatic hams and public speakers had to be a lot to handle when the spotlight was suddenly on you.

“I decided to take the UA High entrance exam,” Hitoshi said, managing a small smile in spite of himself.

Despite his sympathy a moment earlier, Hizashi couldn’t help joining in the excited uproar from around the table that followed Hitoshi’s announcement. “Hell yeah, dude!” he crowed. “Carrying on the family tradition!”

“Does it really count as a tradition if only one of us made it in?” Hiro asked. He seemed to realize how the question had sounded a moment later as Hoshi elbowed him in the side. A strained flicker of sideways glances at HIzashi followed. Hizashi just grinned despite the sudden jolt the words had sent through the pit of his stomach.

“Don’t be such a wet blanket, Hiro,” Hizashi said, shaking his head. “If people are allowed to call things ‘first annual’ then Haru has every right to be a family tradition all by herself.”

“Aww, thanks, Zash,” Haru said, reaching across the table to pinch his cheek. Hizashi swatted her hand away with a snort.

“You went to UA, Aunt Haru?” Hitoshi asked, sounding surprised. Haru preened.

“Sure did! Three years strong in the A-class Hero Course, graduated seventh in my class. Not high enough to get snapped up by one of the famous agencies, but good enough for some solid sidekick gigs,” Haru said.

“That’s right, you’ve been doing temporary assignments at a bunch of agencies, haven’t you? How’s that going?” their mother asked quickly. Everyone seemed eager to sidestep the pit of discomfort Hiro had accidentally opened up, especially Hiro. As everyone’s attention turned to Haru’s newest temp assignment at Loud Cloud’s agency Hiro caught Hizashi’s eye and mouthed “dude, sorry”, grimacing at himself. Hizashi shook his head and signed “no worries” back. The words still burned in his gut, but Hizashi did his best to ignore it and listen to Haru’s story.

Too soon for his liking, Hizashi hit his soft out time, his middle out time, and finally his hard out before the trains stopped running and he’d have to take an overpriced cab home. He said his goodbyes, promising without much hope that it wouldn’t be this long before he saw them all again. As he was putting on his shoes, Haru threw her coat over her shoulders and offered to walk him to the station to make sure he got there okay. Not about to turn down a lingering moment of normalcy before he had to go back to being himself in the morning, he accepted.

“Hey. You okay?” Haru said as they headed up the sidewalk.

“Mm? Yeah, why?” Hizashi said. Haru gave him a Look and Hizashi relented. “I mean, he wasn’t wrong,” he said grudgingly.

“Being right isn’t the same as not being a dick,” Haru pointed out. Hizashi waved a hand as if wafting away the accusation.

“Honestly, Haru, it’s not a big deal. Some of us grow up to be heroes--” Hizashi said, gesturing to Haru-- “and some of us have to make do being the family disappointment,” he finished, gesturing back at himself. “It’s the circle of life.”

“Don’t say things like that,” Haru snapped, surprising him with the sternness in her voice. “You aren’t a disappointment to anyone. Especially me. All right?”

Hizashi smiled at her, shoulders relaxing back out of the sarcastic hunch they had started to reflexively tighten into. “Yeah. Thanks, Haru.”

Haru nodded authoritatively. “So. On to other things, namely this dashing, courageous night delivery guy you mentioned,” she went on, a sly smile creeping over her face. Hizashi tried to ignore the way his face immediately heated up at the implication in her tone.

“What about him?” he asked, amused in spite of himself at the word “dashing” being used for the scruffy, monotone Aizawa.

“I mean, he was gallant enough to come swooping in to your rescue to save you from your own klutziness,” Haru said. “Seems like something you’d want to repay with some kind of favor, don’tcha think? Like one that starts with ‘thank you’ and ends with ‘drinks after work, my treat’?”

Hizashi scoffed, about to blurt out that under no circumstances whatsoever was something like that going to be on the table, but the word “favor” sparked off a half-formed idea in his head. Repaying favors with favors was practically his side business, after all. There might be something in that, though far from the path Haru’s mind seemed to be going down. “You might be on to something there,” he conceded. “I’ll let you know if it works.”

“Make me your best man at the wedding and we’ll call it even,” Haru teased, holding the station door open for him. “Text me when you get back to your place, okay? There’s some bad shit going around right now.”

“Will do. Thanks again, Haru.”

“Just doing my job.” Haru gave him another quick hug-and-hair-ruffling before bidding him goodnight.

Hizashi lay in bed with a very disgruntled Ai-chan snoozing on his chest, burning his eyes with the light from his phone screen. The more he considered what Haru had said, the more the idea appealed to him. The only roadblock now was Aizawa and his apparent determination to freeze Hizashi out. Still, there was more than one way to catch a delivery man, Hizashi thought as he double-checked the station’s equipment budget for this quarter and opened their online supplier in a new browser tab.

It seemed like in aside from “multi-platinum criminal mastermind” and “epicenter of most of the trouble in his life right now”, Shouta could add “compulsive online shopper” to the list of traits Hizashi Yamada was using to intrude on his day-to-day life.

Shouta had done his best to put the confused night he’d helped Yamada avoid arrest out of his mind, ignoring the paper bag of Yamada’s belongings where he’d stuffed it into the back of his closet and getting back to his life. At first Shouta had thought Yamada had either been doing the same, or at the very least avoiding stirring things up while the dust was still settling. Yamada hadn’t made any kind of contact and was keeping quiet about his misadventures in his public life as far as Shouta could tell from the bits and pieces of Yamada’s show he’d caught while on patrol. Instead, however, Yamada appeared to have been just saving up energy for the marathon of attention-seeking he had planned. Nearly every day Asahi Radio was one of his scheduled stops with some new item listed as needing delivered to HIzashi Yamada, signature required. Shouta managed to very calmly beg a few of his coworkers to switch routes with him for the day, making sure to ask the ones with longer routes who would be more than willing to switch him for a shorter day for the same pay. After several days of running unfamiliar routes and going through every willing coworker he had, however, he found himself railroaded back into taking his route back by a politely-worded “friendly reminder” from his supervisor about making sure to get his own work done. Shouta checked his delivery manifest, saying a short, silent prayer to not see what he knew he was going to see down at the bottom: Asahi Radio, three kilogram package for Hizashi Yamada, signature required on delivery. He gritted his teeth, throwing himself into the front seat of his truck and slamming the door behind him. Today was going to be a very long week.

As soon as Chiyaki saw Shouta shuffling through the front door with the box tucked under his arm, they were already hitting Yamada’s extension on their phone. “You got another one, boss,” they said, waving Shouta inside.

“On my way,” Yamada’s voice replied. Shouta was darkly pleased to hear that he sounded almost defeated when he said it, like the week of not getting what he wanted was starting to grate on him as much as his pestering was grating on Shouta. Yamada came slouching out from the back room of the studio. He didn’t look much better than the last time Shouta had seen him; the bruising around his eyes had faded from midnight purple to a sickly pond scum grey-yellow-green and the gash on his forehead seemed to be healing well, but he held neck and upper body stiffly like he was trying very hard not to move too quickly and risk wrenching something. Despite this, his whole posture straightened as he saw that it was Shouta making the delivery today. Shouta sighed internally as Yamada swaggered up to him with a suspiciously cheerful grin.

“Haven’t seen too much of you around here lately,” Yamada said, the barest note of challenge to his tone. Shouta gave him the flattest, most disinterested look he could manage in return.

“We’ve been moving people around,” he said, handing Yamada the clipboard. “Sign here, please.”

“Right, right,” Yamada said. He stamped the bottom of the delivery slip and made to claim is carbon copy. As he started pulling the perforation, he paused as if he’d just thought of something. “Are you allowed to pick up something since you’re already here, or do I have to call in for that?” Yamada asked.

“I can take it for processing if it’s properly addressed, but they’ll charge your account after the fact for the delivery costs. And since it’s Friday it probably won’t get delivered until Monday,” Shouta said. It was technically against policy do it things that way, but a little bit of policy finagling was worth cutting this conversation as short as he could.

“Oh, that’s fine, it’s nothing urgent. Just something I owe a colleague of mine,” Yamada said. “It should still be in the outbox, Chii,” he added, turning to Chiyaki and pointing to a pair of mail trays behind their desk. Shouta collected the envelope from Chiyaki and tucked it under his arm, reclaiming the clipboard from Yamada as well.

“Thanks for your patronage,” Shouta said, already turning and heading towards the door. He tossed the envelope into an empty bin in the back of his truck and was mostly successful in putting it out of his mind.

“Aizawa!”

Shouta halted on the threshold of the employee entrance at the sound of a voice behind him. He sighed, wondering what new impediment was about to be added to his day. When he turned around, however, he was surprised to find Takeshiro, one of the night crew in package processing, approaching him with an envelope clipped to a clipboard.

“Something I can help you with?” Aizawa asked warily. Takeshiro held the clipboard out to him.

“Found somethin’ for you in one of the bins,” Takeshiro replied. “Figured you could sign for it now. No point sendin’ someone all the way uptown for someone who works here, y’know?”

He wasn’t wrong, Shouta supposed, though it seemed strange that someone would be sending him something through the company he worked for. If they knew him well enough to send him things he would have assumed they knew to just use the postal service and save themselves the handling fees.. He set his bag down, having to dig through a few different pockets before he found his spare stamp. Takeshiro watched him with disinterest bordering on impatience. Shouta signed for the envelope and barely had time to tear off his copy of the form before Takeshiro reclaimed the clipboard and bid him a perfunctory good night. Shouta watched him go, eyebrow raised, then shrugged. He would have considered himself a man of few words, but Takeshiro was about as talkative as a tree stump.

Turning back to the envelope, Shouta was somewhat unsurprised to recognize it; the envelope Yamada had gotten him to take for processing earlier that day. Shouta grimaced at the thought that Yamada considered him in any way a “colleague”. The envelope itself was heavier than he would have expected for its size and rattled when he turned it over in his hands. The noise was not encouraging. Shouta slid the envelope into his bag, careful not to jostle it too much as he made his way back to his apartment.

Once there, Shouta dug a filtration mask, a pair of thick leather gloves, and a long-handled pair of chemistry tongs out of the jumble of spare parts and unused equipment in his linen cabinet. It would be somewhat out of character for Yamada to resort to some kind of long-distance assassination via courier package but Shouta wasn’t in the business of being careless around villains. He knelt on his entryway floor, envelope in front of him. Using the tongs he grasped the tab of the envelope and pulled it open. Nothing happened, which was equal parts a relief and suspicious. He took the bottom corner of the envelope between two fingers and pulled the edge of the opening wider with the tongs, sliding the contents of the envelope out onto the floor.

A zip-top sandwich bag full of cash clattered out, landing with a metallic splat. Holding the envelope at arms’s length Shouta peeked inside and saw something square and yellow stuck to the inside; pulling it out revealed a pair of yellow sticky notes stapled together at the top corner that appeared to have been shaken off of the sandwich bag in transit. The note on top read “they took a stupid route and overcharged you”. Dumping out the sandwich bag, Shouta found it contained five thousand, one hundred sixty-nine yen in small bills and change; rounded up, the fare from the hospital to Yamada’s apartment building. A roundabout way of deciding to repay him, Shouta thought, but it showed more discretion that he’d honestly expected out of Yamada. Flipping to the second note, he saw it was an address and a small but detailed hand-drawn map from his apartment to the destination and a meeting time of 8:30pm, signed off with Yamada’s stylized M signature. One step forward, two steps back, Shouta thought as he pulled the respirator mask off with a sigh. The invitation wasn’t a binding agreement, but Yamada had already proved he was willing to go utterly over the top to force Shouta into an interaction. Either Shouta bit the bullet and went now, or he had at least another week of near-constant deliveries to look forward to. At least this way he could return Yamada’s things and not have to look at the accusatory paper bag every time he went to get dressed in the morning. One look at the clock told him he was already destined to be late, but Shouta didn’t bother rushing as he collected the bag and kicked on his shoes to head out again. Whether Yamada waited to see if he was coming or stood him up was the other man’s prerogative.

The address was for a small bistro-style cafe with a rooftop veranda that overlooked the sidewalk. Yamada was hovering beside the door with his phone in his hand, pretending to be engrossed in whatever was on the screen but keeping a sharp eye on passersby. He looked like he had come straight from work, still dressed in the same clothes Shouta had seen him in earlier with a leather laptop bag over one shoulder. The smile he gave Shouta as he approached was as close to genuinely friendly as Shouta had ever seen from him.

“I already got us a table,” Yamada said, nodding to one of the tables on the veranda. He motioned for Shouta to follow him into the restaurant and up a claustrophobically narrow set of stairs next to the door to the kitchen. The two of them sat across from one another at the table, a tension settling between them as soon as they did. Shouta ordered a black coffee without looking at the menu and Yamada requested the server come back in a few minutes to give him time to look things over.

“I’ve never actually been here before,” Yamada admitted when the server left. “I saw it when I was walking home the other day and it struck me as a good place to get some privacy, you know?”

“Hn,” Shouta replied. The veranda was abandoned other than the two of them, with only the tiny staircase or vaulting the safety rail as viable exits. A quiet laugh from Yamada interrupted Shouta’s train of thought. He looked over to see Yamada trying to hide a smirk behind his hand.

“You do that too?” Yamada asked.

“Do what?”

“Tally up every escape route the second you get into a place,” Yamada said. “Hopping the railing wouldn’t be my first choice, but you seemed to be staring at it pretty hard. Bored with me already?”

Shouta scowled at him, trying to ignore the heat in his cheeks at being called out. Instead of answering, he grabbed the paper bag and set it on the table in front of Yamada. Yamada looked at it, then up at Shouta with his head cocked to the side. “I would have returned it sooner, but things came up,” Shouta said, only lying slightly. Things had come up, they were just mostly intangible things like the unmistakable feeling that he didn’t want to see Yamada. Bemused by the roundabout explanation, Yamada unrolled the top of the bag and looked inside. He paused, seeming taken aback when he saw what the bag held.

“So you’re the one who made off with all of this,” Yamada said, not quite managing to keep the surprise out of his voice. He pawed through the bag’s contents and pulled out the tangle of wires and audio parts Shouta had yanked from around his neck.

“I...may have broken that,” Shouta admitted grudgingly. “Sorry. There wasn’t a lot of time.”

Yamada looked it over, running it through his fingers like a jeweler inspecting a string of pearls, then shook his head. “It doesn’t look like it. I worked some break points into it when I built it, like those elastic loops they put in cat collars so they don’t strangle themselves.” He shrugged. “Might be time for an upgrade anyway.” He seemed to catch himself lapsing into thought and shook out of it, holding the handful of assorted technology up like Shouta was supposed to have any idea what he was looking at. “It’s a vocal directional focus,” Yamada explained. “Depending on the combination of switches I use, it activates the speakers to give me a little boost in sending my voice where I want it to go. The only downside is smaller parts burn out twice as fast, and that’s if you’re using them for what they’re meant to do. You can only fight obsolescence for so long.” He shrugged again, setting the gear aside to continue poking through the bag.

Yamada picked up his mask, making a face at the jagged crack across the brow, then his jacket. He inspected the jacket even more closely than he’d looked at his gear, clicking his tongue in annoyance and running his thumb over some deep scuffs on the lapels and sleeves. “A little polish and she’ll be good as new,” he muttered, more to himself than Shouta. As he moved it to the side, something fell out of the pocket and clattered onto the table. Yamada picked it up. “Is this yours?” Yamada asked, holding up a small matte black USB drive between finger and thumb.

“No,” Shouta said, shaking his head. He had quite a few storage drives, but he kept them in a secure pocket elsewhere in his bag from where he’d stowed Yamada’s things.

“Huh.” Yamada looked it over, but from what Shouta could see there didn’t seem to be any kind of label on it. “Do you mind?” Yamada asked, pulling his laptop case up onto the table. Shouta shrugged. Personally he thought the mystery flash drive could wait until Yamada was done with whatever he had called him here for, but Yamada had already packed away his other belonging and was halfway into booting up his computer heedless of Shouta’s waning patience. Yamada’s eyebrows furrowed closer and closer together and he scrolled through the drive’s contents, occasionally making small “hmm”s or “huh”s.

After one especially scathing noise of curiosity, Shouta lost the last of his composure and half-snapped, “Something interesting?”

Yamada blinked, seeming to come back to himself but not looking away from the computer screen. “Possibly,” he said, sounding like he was more thinking out loud than anything. “Looks like the two you chased off were trying to do a little bit of revisionist evidence-planting. Some of these transcripts are mine, but some of them are definitely not. They are very interesting, though. If the night had gone a little differently those two would’ve had a nice feather in their cap.” Saying that seemed to jog him fully back to the present. “Anyway,” he said, pulling the drive out of his laptop and stowing both back in the case. “That actually brings me to what I actually wanted to talk to you about.”

“Which is?” Shouta asked. He couldn’t help feeling relieved that they had finally gotten to the point of this tiresome meeting.

“I wanted to thank you,” Yamada said. His expression was as close to serious as Shouta had seen from him and his voice lacked any of the attention-seeking cheeriness or slick smarm he usually used. “You stuck your neck out for me when you didn’t have to, and things would have broken pretty bad for me if you hadn’t been there.”

“Er. You’re welcome,” Shouta said. The words felt very awkward in his mouth. The corner of Yamada’s mouth flickered up into an almost-smile but it was gone again a moment later.

“That’s only half of why I asked you to meet me, if I’m honest,” Yamada continued. Shouta frowned, a sinking feeling settling into his gut. Of course there was a catch, he thought irritably. When he didn’t respond, Yamada went on without him. “Since I owe you for saving my skin, I want to offer you a deal. It’s something I think will solve this stalemate we keep finding ourselves in,” Yamada said. He was back in his element, posture too languid and his voice picking up a calculating breeziness. The return to status quo wasn’t completely unexpected but was completely unwelcome.

Shouta waited for Yamada to keep talking, but Yamada seemed to be waiting for him to make the next move. Gritting his teeth, Shouta asked, “What kind of deal?”

Yamada’s renewed grin widened at the acquiescence. “It’s nothing too complicated,” he said. He held up a hand, long fingers spread. “The deal is ‘first to five wins.’ Each of us gets to ask the other five favors, no strings attached, no questions asked. The first one to use up all five has to willingly turn themself over to the authorities and never breathe a word about what they know about the other.”

Shouta stared at him, taken aback. He’d expected something sneaky that would keep the scales tipped in Yamada’s favor, but turning the situation into some inane rivalry game was a twist he hadn’t seen coming. As far as he could tell, Yamada was completely serious about the suggestion; he seemed proud of both the idea and the reaction it had gotten out of Shouta.

“You said no questions asked. You mean, no matter what the favor is, we’re required to do it because we agreed to the deal?” Shouta asked. Yamada nodded. “So what’s stopping one of us from saying, ‘do me a favor and go turn yourself at the nearest police station and pretend you never met me’?”

Yamada frowned. “Nothing, I guess, other than a sense of fair play,” he said coolly. “Deals like this require a certain level of trust to work.”

Shouta snorted. “What makes you think I trust you?”

“There has to be some reason for a guy like you to lie to the police and withhold evidence, then let the only other person who knows the truth walk away from you,” Yamada said, shrugging one shoulder.

He had a point, much to Shouta’s annoyance. His choice to let Yamada go that night and then do everything he could to not see him until now was more one of exhaustion mixed with avoidance, but not once in the midst of it had it occurred to him that he might have to worry about Yamada turning him in to the police. He must have been silent long enough that Yamada could sense him coming around to the idea, as Yamada’s grin returned in all its toothy, rankling glory.

“So, is that a yes?” Five strikes for each of us. Well,” he corrected himself, “five and four. I’m guessing I’ve probably already burned one free pass at your good will.”

Shouta shook his head. “No,” he said. “If this is to level the playing field, it’s going to be level. Five for each of us, like you said. What happened before was a...lapse in judgement,” he finished, scowling at himself. His moment of ill-advised altruism had officially overstayed its welcome.

Hizashi gave the IT intern a tight but friendly smile as she waved to him before going to check on the status of the server migration. He hated having to do delicate research like this at work; every time one of his coworkers needed something in the room he shared with the server banks he couldn’t help jumping to attention, his hand poised on the lid of his laptop to snap it shut if they wandered too close. The cover it provided him was mostly worth the anxiety, however. A single IP using a VPN in the middle of an apartment block full of unsecured cable company wifi signals was suspicious; another VPN added to the tangle of secure signals emanating from a tech-heavy operation like a radio station was just another Tuesday. Hizashi waited for the intern to finish her checks before going back to what he’d been looking at before he was interrupted.

As far as he was able to find in the HR filings for Solo-Falcon Deliveries they only had one employee named Aizawa, first name Shouta. The photo that accompanied the digitized CV was younger-looking but the man was recognizable nonetheless; same perpetual look of knowing what a hairbrush was in concept but no evidence of him owning one, same dour, “are we done yet?” expression in his dark eyes. Said CV was as barebones as Hizashi had ever seen: eight years at Solo-Falcon Deliveries preceded by a plethora of short term post-middle school jobs; school transcripts from a dozen different private tutors that came to a sudden stop at the end of middle school. His permanent residence had been the same for as long as Aizawa had been working, cosigned by an adult family member with the stipulation that the lease would pass to Aizawa when he turned eighteen. As far as Hizashi could tell Shouta Aizawa had popped out of nothingness as a poe-faced fifteen-year-old looking for a job.

Trying to get any answers out of social media was equally fruitless. Retracing Aizawa’s online steps revealed a ghost town of abandoned accounts in his wake, all following the same pattern of non-use. He would sign up for a new platform, friend or follow one or two other accounts, make half a dozen posts over the course of about a year, then drop it completely without bothering to deactivate or delete. The posts were all the kind of non-entities one could expect out of someone who wasn’t expecting to stick around for very long. Even on the accounts he’d used the most they mostly consisted of inoffensive comments about the weather or work and slightly blurry cell phone pictures of cats.

Even the government seemed to have no luck in catching ahold of Aizawa longer than the time it took to confirm his address, collect his taxes, and send him back on his way. According to his Quirk registration, Aizawa had been something of an early bloomer, developing his nullification power before he even hit kindergarten and being switched from public schooling to private education soon afterwards for reasons of “health concerns”. Elementary and middle school records matched the near-yearly swapping of home tutors from his CV, but Hizashi noticed with interest that there was one massive omission between the two. Several records back in the Quirk registry’s access history was a request from the registrar of UA High School to confirm Aizawa’s personal and Quirk information. Raising an eyebrow Hizashi flipped back to Aizawa’s schooling history and found a perfunctory footnote at the bottom of the file: UA High School registration Apr 2004-Nov 2004; file sealed per subject request. Nothing else was said, just that short “by the way” on a digital post-it note before going on to document the work history and financial filings Hizashi already knew about.

Either Aizawa was some kind of subterfuge wunderkind or he really was just this disconnected. Hizashi sighed and leaned back in his chair, turning that over in his mind. A sealed UA record was as tantalizing a morsel of intrigue as you could ask for, but he wasn’t arrogant enough to think he could go up against a security system as ironclad as theirs with nothing but a masked IP and an undeniable curiosity. There were favors he could call in, Hizashi supposed, people he could ask. Said people would want something equally backbreaking in return as insurance on their investments but that could be relegated to a date far in the future where he had the information in hand and could gauge its actual worth for himself.

Before he had time to start flipping through his mental address book, however, he was interrupted by a buzzing from his cell phone. The display showed an unlisted number being forwarded through his “business line”, a landline he’d had installed in a condemned fast food restaurant on the far edge of the city. Hizashi glanced at his door to make sure it was fully shut before swiping to accept the call.

“Mmn,” he muttered by way of greeting. There was a click, and an automated voice on the other end began to speak in choppy, text-to-speech sentences.

“Bird. Seguchi. Your backdoor into the Hero Registry failed.” Hizashi rolled his eyes. Of course he was the problem, it couldn’t possibly be that Seguchi's client was incompetant. “You owe me a workable solution, do it right this time. Meet tonight at nine sharp, no later. Directions to follow.” The message barked out the address and Hizashi scribbled it disinterestedly onto the back of an envelope. It looked like his pet project would have to take a backseat for something more pressing but way less interesting, he thought with a disappointed sigh.

Biting back a curse, Shouta stared daggers at the bland error box telling him he didn’t have the proper access clearance for the files he needed. He’d spent most of the morning trying to fake the new set of credentials the police database was requiring to view the updated version of the Mockingbird dossier. The security had never been what you could call lax, but the newest version required both the highest clearance level Shouta had ever seen as well as a password that from what he’d been able to glean was just a long randomly-generated string of characters that maxed out the number of available spaces. He gritted his teeth and decided the building headache at the back of his skull was telling him he needed to switch to something a little less frustrating, though such things felt thin on the ground at the moment.

Trying to reconcile the comings and goings of Hizashi Yamada with the known Mockingbird incidents was proving to be an exercise in futility. Yamada didn’t necessarily have an alibi for every time Mockingbird had been sighted in the act, but there was also no real reason for anyone to suspect him of needing one. Mockingbird was a serial offender with a list of potential charges that took up several single-spaced pages in his police file; Hizashi Yamada was the well-known and well-loved operations manager and late night host for a radio station that while not the biggest or wealthiest was far from needing any kind of criminal boost. The only link between the two was Yamada’s oft-abused Quirk, but even that information was a double-edged sword at best. The police had been smart enough to keep the press away from the more sensitive details of the Mockingbird case to avoid copycats and false reports but no one knowing the connection was possible left Shouta shouting into the void. If he went as a civilian witness to the police, he would have to think of a very good lie for how he knew Mockingbird’s M.O. but hadn’t gone to them before now; if he went to them as an admitted vigilante, they might take his report more seriously but he’d end up in handcuffs right next to Yamada. As with most things he’d have to go into this on his own, something that would be a much simpler undertaking if he wasn’t being actively locked out of the information he needed to do so.

“Computer trouble?” a voice above him asked. Shouta jumped, causing the large ginger cat in his lap to grumble and dig its claws into his thighs in retaliation. He gave the cat an apologetic pat on the head and looked up to see one of the cat cafe’s servers standing next to his table.

“Uh, no. It’s just old. Doesn’t like to load,” Shouta lied, swapping screens as casually as he could. The server nodded with a sympathetic smile.

“I getcha,” she said. “It’s such a pain when they still work but they’re too old to really do the work. Our whole register system is older than I am but we can’t get the old workhorse to give up the ghost and let us replace her.” She chuckled, shrugging. “Did you want a refill on that coffee?” she added, pointing to Shouta’s half-full cup that had gone cold long ago.

“Sure, thanks. One sugar, no milk,” Shouta said. He scratched the cat in his lap behind the ears until the server was safely back behind the counter putting his order in before switching back to his other window.

The page had blacked out, the error message now telling him that his session had expired and would not be renewed. He tried closing his browser and restarting it, but the window instantly dimmed and let him know that his session was well and truly dead for today. Shouta wondered if this was a new protocol being rolled out across the board or if he wasn’t the only one they were having to lock out. If the same gap in the digital fence was being used by someone with less scrupulous intents, Shouta supposed he couldn’t entirely begrudge the police for fixing the fault and adding a less easily manipulated system. Trying to channel his frustration into a more helpful direction, Shouta opened the spreadsheet he’d been using to build a Mockingbird timeline and added what scraps of new information he’d been able to screenshot. He highlighted the long periods of silence and typed each time period and Yamada’s name into individual browser tabs.

Hizashi Yamada was as easy to track as Mockingbird was impossible to pin down. Yamada put a lot of effort into propagating his breezy, unbothered persona, but seemed to put just as much into being a diligent employee; the gaps Shouta had found in Mockingbird’s movements didn’t generate so much as a sick day for Yamada. Shouta supposed if you weren’t actively looking for irregularities the lack of them wouldn’t have sparked interest, but to him it was both unnatural and damning. There had to be a weak spot somewhere, Shouta thought. Absurdly careful was one thing, but perfect was something else entirely. He had a suspicion that there was information in the locked sections of Mockingbird’s dossier that would mean nothing to the police without knowing Yamada’s civilian movements but would be the key to getting the upper hand on him for Shouta. But getting in there for a better look around would take time, and with his afternoon delivery shift fast approaching time was not something he had in excess. Another day with better luck, Shouta thought, saving what little progress he’d made and shutting his laptop.

Hebiko, Seguchi’s second in command and high-ranking candidate for Hizashi’s least favorite person on the planet, was waiting for him under the awning of the burned-out corner shop they were supposed to meet at. Hizashi groaned internally at the sight of her, fighting the urge to turn on his heel and cut his losses. Instead he raised a hand in greeting.

“Nice weather for it,” he said.

Hebiko fixed him with an unblinking stare and an emotionless smile. “It’s been a while, Bird,” she said, extending a hand to him like she expected him to shake it. Vivid memories of falling for the ploy and being subjected to the tetanus-like paralysis of her Snakebite Quirk the first time they’d met made Hizashi’s hands reflexively clench into fists. He meaningfully tucked his hands into his jeans pockets and looked around.

“Is your boss planning on joining us, or did he decide the B-team could handle this one on their own?” he asked.

“He had a more important appointment to keep,” Hebiko replied. Her smile widened without gaining so much as a scrap of good will. Hizashi was tempted to point out that Seguchi had thought this was important enough to call him out in the middle of a weekday evening, but his desire to get this over with before all of the good takeout places closed won out.

“His prerogative,” Hizashi said instead, shrugging. “Shall we, then?”

“After you,” Hebiko said, gesturing down the narrow alley between this building and the next. “We’re parked a street up from here,” Hebiko added when Hizashi didn’t move. “It’ll be easier to just cut through here.”

Hizashi scraped together the waning scraps of his patience, reminding himself that there was a takeaway curry and a quiet night at home with his cat on the other end of this nonsense, and headed up the alley where she was pointing.

“Good work today!” Shouta’s manager called over his shoulder as he left the employee changing room. Shouta’s two remaining coworkers called it back to him over the clang of closing lockers. Shouta muttered a vague reply a little too late, his mind already turning to what he had planned for after work.

With a last-minute change in the schedule he had somehow escaped an early shift tomorrow morning after tonight’s late shift, which meant he had until tomorrow afternoon to sleep and eat and all of the other things he usually had to cram into the few hours between clocking out and clocking back in. His heart ached to get out and stretch his legs on a long patrol, missing the routine in the wake of his recent garbage schedule. His head knew better, though. The late hour would mean fewer personnel working at police central intelligence, which would mean fewer eyes on what files were being accessed and by whom, and his newly-opened timetable would mean plenty of time to figure out what he was supposed to do about the lock on the Mockingbird dossier.

Shouta threw his bag over his shoulders, bidding his coworkers a hasty good night and walking quickly out the door before anything had time to interrupt his plans for the evening.

Hebiko followed at a distance that felt both too close and uncomfortably distant, her footsteps almost purposefully off-beat from his own. Hizashi opened his mouth to invite her to stop being such a stalker and just walk next to him, but instead found himself being slammed sideways into the alley wall by something that exploded out of a garbage bag next to a nearby dumpster. Hizashi staggered, breath catching short and sharp in his throat from the hit. Hebiko’s foot shot out from behind him, dead-legging him into an awkward half-crouch on the pavement. Hizashi looked up to see Takeshiro, one of Hebiko’s favorite minions, hopping out of the dumpster. The garbage bag that had assaulted him rustled and squirmed as a thick tangle of dessicated vegetable cuttings slithered out and stood ready by Takeshiro’s side. Hizashi choked back a gag at the smell of it, working to keep his face unconcerned.

“I feel like you might have taken that B-team comment from earlier a little too personally,” he said, the words coming out in a pained wheeze. For the first time Hebiko’s smile held actual mirth and Hizashi deeply regretted the development.

“You’ve been pissing a lot of people off lately, Bird,” Hebiko said.

“Including your boss, apparently,” Hizashi agreed. He pivoted on his toes and tried to keep his eyes on both of them as he straightened up. “He must be pretty irritated to send his pets to do his wet work without coming along to gloat.”

Takeshiro’s plant weapon struck out at him again, sending Hizashi skittering sideways to avoid it. Hizashi gritted his teeth. Hebiko and Takeshiro were each blocking an open end of the alley, closing ranks around him along with Takeshiro’s plant. The only other potential exit he had was a fire escape above the dumpster Takeshiro had crawled out of. If he could keep them distracted long enough to dart through and scramble up the escape there was a chance he could make it out of this in one fresh-scented fully mobile piece. He thought of the extendable police baton hidden in the holster sewn into the back of his jacket but decided it was better to keep it as a last resort. There was no point in escalating a situation already at the snapping point if he could find another way out of it.

“The boss doesn’t know you’re here,” Hebiko said coolly. “The cops caught him trying to get through the Hero Registry’s security net last week using the instructions he got from you. He’s been in custody ever since.”

“Sounds like user error to me,” Hizashi replied, “since the information wasn’t for him in the first place. Does he go through other people’s mail too?”

“That’s really cute coming from someone who makes a living out of digging in digital garbage looking for things to sell,” Hebiko snapped.

“Ooh, really hitting me where it hurts,” Hizashi said. He put on the biggest, fakest grin he could muster, putting a hand to his chest in mock offense. Hebiko’s eyes narrowed, her hands flexing at her sides like she was trying to resist the urge to throttle him. Takeshiro’s plant weapon was starting to twitch and writhe at Takeshiro’s side, belying the man’s outward straightfaced patience. His strategy was panning out for the moment, and hopefully a moment was all he would need.

“We’re about to find a few more places for it to hurt,” Hebiko said, lips curling back from her teeth in a cold smirk.

“Thanks but no thanks.”

Seizing his chance, Hizashi caught Hebiko hard in the jaw with a surprise right hook. She stumbled back a step before coming towards him with an open-palmed strike of her own, ready to freeze him where he stood. Hizashi managed to avoid it just in time, hooking his foot around the back of her knee and sweeping it out from under her. He felt a hand grab him by the back of the jacket and yank him back several steps, nearly taking him off his feet as well. Hizashi twisted sharply towards Takeshiro, forcing the man to loosen his grip just long enough for Hizashi to duck away. He made it all the way up onto the lip of the dumpster and felt his fingers brush the ladder to the fire escape before something grabbed him around the waist and pulled him hard down onto hands and knees on the pavement. Hizashi yelped as pain crackled through his shins and forearms. Before he had time to recover he felt a hand snatch his sweatshirt’s hood off of his head, followed by Hebiko’s sharp fingers digging into the back of his neck. Instantly his body went rigid, joints locking painfully together against his will.

“This is why I hate birds,” Hebiko said, her voice mockingly conversational in Hizashi’s ear. “Whenever things get a little intense, they try to flit away before you get to have any fun with them.”

Without any warning Hebiko grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head forward, slamming it with all her strength into the steel side of the dumpster. Hizashi went limp, the fading paralysis replaced by a dazed ringing in his ears and an unstrung feeling throughout his limbs. He struggled to keep himself awake as black static overtook his vision. Distantly Hizashi could feel hands turning him over and working to pick him up. He heard a second metallic clang, followed by Hebiko snapping something to Takeshiro at the far end of the sludge his brain was sinking into. Before he could make any sense out of any of it, he’d drifted too deep and everything was dark buzzing silence in his head.

Shouta had been trying his best to keep his head down and his eyes on the goal of getting home, but the instant he’d seen the two of them he knew there was going to be trouble. The street was mostly empty and the few people who were out were in motion, leaving jobs or late-night restaurants and heading to wherever they were going after that. The two under the awning, however, were just standing there, carefully keeping to the little bit of shadow the scraps of ripped canvas still cast over the sidewalk. Shouta slowed, pulling his hood up to make it slightly less obvious that he was watching them. One of the figures was tall and skinny with a sharp silhouette, the other at least a foot shorter with unnaturally stiff posture. They talked for a moment before the shorter one waved the taller into the nearby alleyway. Shouta’s eyes narrowed. Never a good sign. He unsnapped the pocket he’d sewn into the shoulder strap of his bag, pulling out one of the bolases he’d stowed there for emergencies. Tucking it tightly into his palm he approached the mouth of the alley. A quick check of the sidewalk confirmed no one else seemed to have noticed him or the two he was following, so Shouta edged up on the corner of the building and peered down the alley.

A third, stockier figured had joined the group from somewhere in the time it took him to approach; they and the short one had closed ranks around the tall one to prevent any potential escape. Shouta dropped into a crouch as he rounded the corner, scuffing his feet over the ground to keep his steps quiet. The group was too far away for Shouta to tell what they were saying, but the conversation seemed to turn sour very quickly. Shouta only managed a few steps towards them before whatever was said triggered a short, dirty fight and the attempt at a quick exit by the tall one via a nearby fire escape. Something fast and tentacle-like caught them around the waist before they made it and dragged them back down. A moment later the short one had them by the back of them neck and slammed them head-first into the side of the dumpster with a sickening clang of skull on metal that echoed out in the otherwise muted night. The tall figure lolled sidewise, dropping senseless onto the ground and for a moment Shouta thought the other two were just going to leave them there. Worse plans were being made, it seemed, as instead the two still standing worked together to roll the unconscious third over and the stocky one made to throw them over their shoulder.

As quickly as he could, Shouta spun the bolas in his hand and threw it at the stocky figure as they bent over. Just shy of wrapping around them, however, the tentacle thing reared up again and slapped the bolas aside. It wrapped uselessly around the bottom of the fire escape ladder with a metallic snap and both of the standing figures turned to see Shouta where he had broken his cover. He pulled another spare bolas out and started it spinning as he rushed them.

“Forget it, get to the car!” the shorter figure commanded the stocky one as they made a move to grab the unconscious figure again. Sprinting away, they made a cursory attempt at tripping Shouta with the tentacle thing, but the swipe swung wide and the tentacle melted into a glob of rotting vegetables as he darted past. The second bolas flew straight, but the two of them had a big enough head start on their side that it dropped and skidded along the ground at their heels without making contact. They had already ducked into a nondescript black sedan and were pulling into traffic by the time Shouta reached the other end of the alley. Shouta pulled his phone out of his pocket and just managed to get a photo of the back of their car. He realized too late that the car didn’t have any plates. Muttering a sharp curse under his breath, Shouta turned and walked back to where they had abandoned the body.

A cold, dawning recognition began to spread in the pit of his stomach as he approached. The figure lay face-down on the concrete where it had been dropped, a spill of long blond hair falling over the collar of a familiar feathered leather jacket. Gently turning the body over confirmed his worst suspicion. Mockingbird’s mask now sported a jagged crack along the top and was streaked with blood from where it had cut into his forehead when his head slammed into the dumpster. Under the blood he looked unpleasantly pale in the dim alley light. His eyelids flickered and he let out a small moaning breath as Shouta put two fingers to his neck to confirm there was a pulse. Not dead, Shouta confirmed with a tight grimace, just knocked out.

Shouta sat back on his heels, brain speeding off in opposite directions at the same time. He knew he was duty-bound to find the nearest patrolling officer or hero and turn Mockingbird in; it was the only good ending for the situation, even if his accomplices had managed to get away. Then again, those “accomplices” had knocked Mockingbird out and for all intents and purposes left him for dead. Whatever had gone south between them, Mockingbird had ended up a victim of it in the end. It seemed unfair somehow for him to get turned over to law enforcement when what he needed was help, like adding insult to injury. A police siren rang out on the street Shouta had followed Mockingbird and the others off of, making Shouta jump. He didn’t have time to debate it. Before better instincts could kick in, he shuffled off his bag and opened the farthest-back compression pocket.

“Sorry about this,” Shouta muttered. Working quickly, he stripped off Mockingbird’s mask and jacket, stuffing them into his bag. Mockingbird was wearing a piece of homemade gear around his neck, partially hidden by the neckline of his hoodie. It looked like a series of spare audio parts wired into a tight collar; long wires stretched down under his sleeves to controls strapped to the palms of his hands under his gloves. The sirens were getting uncomfortably close as Shouta tried to find a way to get it off of him. Finally he just took each side of a join in one hand and yanked, pulling all of the wires free and and shoving the whole contraption in his bag as well. He managed to get everything strapped flat and his bag back over his shoulders as blue and red lights announced the approach of the police. Taking a deep breath and turning his gut-level panic into an expression of concern, Shouta half-jogged out of the alley to meet them.

“Hey! Hey over here, I think he needs help!” Shouta shouted, waving his arms to flag the car down.

The next hour was a hazy blur of trying to keep his story straight for every cop he had to repeat it to, from the scene to the ambulance to a private conference room at the hospital. He had been on his way home from work, he said in increasing tones of weariness, and he heard what he thought was a fight in the alley as he passed by. He tried to step in after the muggers threw Yamada against the dumpster, but they ran off before he could get a good look at them. No, he didn’t really know Yamada, he just recognized him from a delivery he’d made. No, he wasn’t the one who made the initial call to the police, he had been trying to check if Yamada was dead or just unconscious. No, he didn’t have any additional information, he had honestly just been in the right place at the right time. Each time the police seemed to get a little less interested in him, turning their attention to questioning Yamada when the doctors were done running tests. Finally they thanked him for his time and Shouta was allowed to sit by himself in the waiting room and catch his breath.

Every single part of him felt like it was trying to fistfight every other part, but his head was winning the pain battle by a longshot. Hizashi opened his eyes and immediately shut them again with a sharp grunt of pain as white fluorescent lights burned into his skull. He tried again more slowly, squinting his eyes open in slow shifts to let them adjust. A hospital room came into focus bit by bit.. His jacket and gear were gone and his feet were bare. He could see a doctor and nurse standing a few feet away, talking to a uniformed officer. All of them seemed relatively relaxed, considering where they were. There was an uneasy feeling of Wrongness about the situation, but before he had time to dwell on it, the three of them noticed he was awake and came to stand around his bed.

“‘M I under arrest?” Hizashi mumbled. It wasn’t the best opener, but putting thoughts into words and having them stay in the right order was proving to be a challenge right now.

“Nothing so drastic, Mr. Yamada,” the doctor said, smiling at the perceived joke. “Officer Fujiwara is just here to take a statement about what happened to you tonight after we run a few tests to make sure everything’s shipshape up here,” she added, tapping her own temple with an index finger.

“Okay,” Hizashi said slowly. The time delay between ears and brain was slowly shortening, but somehow that wasn’t helping things make sense. He wasn’t being detained (yet), and they’d called him Yamada, which seemed to imply better things than he had expected. How that better outcome had happened was still up for debate but he was more than willing to let it ride for the moment.

The doctor introduced herself as Dr. Watanabe before going through the usual battery of post-concussion memory and comprehension tests that a childhood spent roughhousing with four siblings had turned into second nature for Hizashi. Slowly but surely as they spoke Hizashi’s brain clicked up through the gears until he was mostly running on all cylinders. He kept the conversation going as they wheeled him out of the room for a quick brain scan and then back in once it was done. Too soon, however, came the moment when he had to explain himself to the police.

“I understand things may be a little bit confused at the moment,” Officer Fujiwara began, cutting off Hizashi’s excuse before he could even make it. “We can fill in the more minor details at a later date as they come back to you. For right now, just tell me what you remember.”

Hizashi hesitated, trying to come up with a story that was both plausible and matched enough of the details that it wouldn’t come back to bite him later. “Uh. I was out walking,” he started, trying to get his feet under himself as he spoke. “There’s a takeout place I like, but it’s on the other side of town from my apartment so I don’t go there much unless I’m working late.”

“Understandable. Where is it that you work, Mr. Yamada?” Officer Fujiwara asked.

“Asahi Radio. I manage operations and fill in when our hosts are out. I had some paperwork to finish up, so I stayed late tonight.” Nice, neat, normal little life, Hizashi thought, willing her to buy the excuse. Officer Fujiwara made no indication that she did or didn’t believe it. Instead she just nodded and scribbled down shorthand on her notepad, motioning for him to go on. “I was trying to get home before it got too late, so I took a shortcut to the restaurant, but…” Hizashi trailed off, stiffly shaking his head. “I don’t know. It gets kind of jumbled after that.”

“I see. Do you remember seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary while you were walking? Anyone suspicious, anyone seeming like they were following you?” Officer Fujiwara asked. Hizashi shook his head.

“No, but I wasn’t really looking I guess. Too distracted by my stomach,” Hizashi replied, cracking a smile at his own joke. Officer Fujiwara gave him a thin smile.

“Anything else you can remember?” she asked. Hizashi pretended to think. Trying to remember things in the order that they had happened after Hebiko had hit him with her Snakebite was genuinely difficult and added a touch of realism to his stymied expression.

“Sorry, no,” he said.

“Not a problem, Mr. Yamada. Here’s my card, and one for my immediate superior,” Officer Fujiwara said, handing him a pair of business cards. “If anything comes to mind later, please feel free to give us a call and let us know.”

Hizashi thanked her and accepted the cards, giving her his number at the station in return in case they needed to call him back instead. Officer Fujiwara bid him a good evening and left. Hizashi allowed himself to breathe a long sigh of relief as Dr. Watanabe returned.

“Well, the good news is your scans came back looking clear as can be hoped for,” she said brightly. “We can go ahead and keep you overnight for observation if you would like, but you should be all right to go ahead home if you’d rather do that. I believe your friend’s still out in the waiting room if the two of you need to talk it over.”

A cold jolt sank into the pit of Hizashi’s stomach, but he tried to keep it off his face. “Uh, yeah,” he agreed. “That might be best.”

Dr. Watanabe nodded and left to go get said “friend”. Hizashi sat up, sliding his legs over to sit on the side of the bed. He wasn’t really feeling up to running for his life after the rest of what happened tonight, but if Hebiko had followed him all the way to the hospital it seemed like he wasn’t going to have much choice. Maybe the cops would still be down in the lobby when he got there and he could have a miraculous return of memory that the stringy, suspicious-looking woman who had said she was here to get him was actually here to get him.

The frantic train of thought had a massive derail, however, as Dr. Watanabe returned to the room with a tall, shuffling figure in tow. Hizashi blinked, sure he had to be seeing things as Aizawa awkwardly nodded in greeting.

“Hey,” Aizawa muttered. “Erm. How’re you feeling?”

“A little confused,” Hizashi said. He tried to raise his eyebrow, but relented when the motion pulled too hard at the stitches in his forehead. “But, uh. Okay, I guess. Are you my escort home?”

Aizawa gave him a slightly sour look at the question but nodded. “I guess so,” he said.

In a renewed haze of bewilderment Hizashi reclaimed what of his belongings hadn’t been thrown out as a biohazard and signed himself out of the hospital while Aizawa called them a taxi. A very stiff, silent cab ride followed, neither of them knowing how to break the silence without making this worse than it already was.

“How’d you know where I was?” Hizashi asked finally, eyes locked forward out the front windshield of the taxi. “Decide to follow me?”

“No,” Aizawa replied flatly. “Just bad luck I guess.”

“Yours or mine?”

“Both.”

Hizashi snorted. “For once we agree on something,” he said.

The cab pulled to a stop in front of Hizashi’s building and his door creaked open to let him out. Aizawa cleared his throat as Hizashi shambled up off the seat.

“Do you...want me to come with you?” Aizawa asked, with a note in his voice that sounded like genuine concern. Hizashi paused, amused in spite of himself.

Hizashi pushed himself to the edge of his limit, legs pumping and chest burning for breath as he ran. His end goal was in sight, clear as day in from of him, but even as he closed in on it, it seemed impossibly far away.

“One twenty-eight point nine. You’re keeping a good pace with yourself,” Haruko announced, clicking the button on her stopwatch.

Hizashi staggered to a stop, hands behind his head as he caught his breath. “Dammit,” he muttered. His sister might have been impressed by his consistency but the lack of progress was frustrating. He didn’t want to admit it, but that vigilante from the other night had him rattled. Hizashi was used to outfoxing people bound by regulations that kept them and everyone around them safe but tied their hands when it came to someone like him. The vigilante, however, could meet him on an even playing field and was faster, more agile, and unflinchingly tenacious. Hizashi had to admit he was almost excited to meet up with the vigilante again for the thrill of it, but he was aware that his last escape had been more blind luck than skill. He was going to have to step up his own game monumentally to keep one step ahead.

“C’mon, Zash, don’t get yourself down,” Haru said, reaching up to ruffle his hair. “Even if you are plateauing, it’s at a good place. There’s no glory in ripping yourself apart for a couple extra seconds.”

Hizashi sighed but nodded, knowing she was right. He was about to say he was ready to reset and go again when there was a flurry of movement and chatter outside the training room door.

“What in the world?” Haru muttered, sticking her head out into the hall. “Hey, Megumi, what gives?” she asked, waving down one of the other trainers as they passed by.

“Some guy’s showing off in the parkour room,” Megumi replied with a shrug.

“Oh. It is about that time, isn’t it?” Haru said, checking her watch.

“What’s going on?” Hizashi asked, intrigued in spite of himself. Haru grinned at him.

“We’re being haunted,” she said by way of non-explanation. When he just stared back at her blankly Haru laughed and nodded down the hall. “C’mon, we’ll take a break and I’ll show you.”

They followed the trickle of people to a large plate glass window that overlooked another larger training room. The room was entirely taken up by a huge foam-and-plywood climbing structure full of sheer walls, sharp drops, and metal chin-up bars stuck in at odd angles. Making an impressive run of the place was a broad-shouldered man in all black workout gear, his dark hair in a short tangled ponytail at the back of his neck. It wasn’t until the man did an impressive leap over a waist-height wall that ended in a rolling landing back on his feet and almost immediately pressed a hand to the left side of his chest with a grimace that Hizashi recognized the vigilante from a few nights ago.

“Who is that?” he asked, trying to keep the question casual.

“No idea,” Haru shrugged. “Dude’s a machine, though. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday he swipes himself in at four, does a few miles on the suspended track, and then tears it up on the parkour course for an hour and a half. Swipes himself out at six-thirty like clockwork. Never talks to anyone, never rents a locker, no-nothing. If he’s got a name hell if any of us know what it is. We just call him The Ghost.”

“Huh.” Hizashi smirked a little to himself, watching as the vigilante squared his shoulders and began his run again. The man kept an impressively low profile for someone so notorious. Hizashi wondered if he could find a way to sneak into the gym’s registration logs and put a name to the face after all. His musing was interrupted by Haru holding up her water bottle under his nose and giving it a proffering waggle. “I’m good, thanks,” Hizashi said, shaking his head.

“You sure? You were looking a little thirsty,” Haru said, grinning.

Hizashi glowered at her, snatching the bottle out of her hand and squirting her in the face with it. “Hardy-har. Asshole,” he muttered. Haru just laughed.

“All right, break time’s over, slacker. You still owe me four more shuttle runs and a round on the weight machines,” she said, using the hem of Hizashi’s teeshirt to dry her face off.

Hizashi groaned. “I’m telling Mom,” he whined as they turned away from the window and headed back to the training room.

“It’d be the first time you called her in, like, four months, so.” Haru shrugged. “I’ll take what I can get at this point.”

Hizashi grimaced, the casual disappointment in her voice scraping him raw. “Way to kick me when I’m down, Haru,” he said.

Haru sighed, mouth twisting into a half-apologetic frown. “Look, Zash. We both know you get up to some shit that you don’t want the rest of us involved in and that’s fine. It’s not fine,” she corrected herself, “but it’s fine. It’s just. Knowing that and having you fall off the planet for months at a time...kinda freaks me out, y’know? I’m not saying you have to check in every hour on the hour or anything but more often than Christmas, New Years, and birthdays wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Hizashi muttered. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, just keep it in mind, okay?” Haru said. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders in a hug made that much tighter by her Quirk, punctuated with an encouraging smack on the back. “Now c’mon, gloomy gills. You hired me to kick your ass, so I’m gonna.”

By the third delivery of the morning Shouta was regretting not calling in again. He’d pushed himself too hard trying to get back into his normal gym routine and every inch of him was letting him know it. He slid a box of audio equipment onto a dolly, sharp little spikes of pain shooting through his back and side as he did, and wheeled it up to the radio station’s front door. Just five more hours, he reminded himself. He’d worked much longer delivery shifts in much worse condition than this. Just five more hours.

There was nobody at the station’s reception desk. Shouta sighed, shoulders sagging. He wondered if he was going to have to figure out how their paging system worked and call the package’s addressee himself. It wouldn’t be the first time, but it was always a procedural nightmare if someone got up in arms about a non-employee using their phones and decided to give his boss an earful for it.

Luckily for him there came the sound of a half-whispered swear word followed by racing footsteps from down the hall. What looked like a very embarrassed intern rushed forward with a sunny “HicanIhelpyou?”, running the words together as they dropped into the chair behind the desk and practically threw their phone and coffee mug out of sight. Their name tag said “Chiyaki” and the look on their face said “please for the love of god don’t tell my boss”.

“Solo-Falcon Deliveries, I’ve got a package for...Hizashi Yamada,” Shouta said, double-checking the name on the delivery slip.

“Okay, one sec,” Chiyaki said brightly. They pushed a speed-dial extension on the phone bank next to them. It only rang once before someone picked up.

“Yah-mada.” The voice on the other end was sing-song and familiar in a way Shouta couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Heya, boss,” Chiyaki said. “The new presentation mics are here, the delivery guy needs you to sign for them.”

“Great timing, I was just about to start boxing up the old ones! Be right there.” The voice on the other end was suddenly louder, clearer, and sounded like it was coming from just over Shouta’s shoulder. Shouta’s breath seized in his chest and his head snapped around, fully expecting to see Mockingbird standing smirking right behind him. The station lobby was completely empty other than himself, the intern, and the box he was supposed to be delivering. When Shouta turned back around Chiyaki was smiling sympathetically at him.

“He does that,” they said apologetically. “It should just be a minute.”

Shouta nodded, taken aback by their total nonchalance. He supposed it made a certain kind of sense for Mockingbird to use his Quirk as a party trick and condition the people around him not to notice it. He didn’t have much time to mull over the logistics of that, however, as a lanky figure loped its way up from the back of the station. The man perked up as he caught sight of Shouta, a grin of recognition spreading across his face.

“Oh, hey, bus stop guy!” Mockingbird said cheerfully.

Shouta blinked, momentarily confused before the words clicked into place. Bus stop, right. This was the same man he’d badgered at the bus stop in front of his apartment building the morning after his bout with Mockingbird; same long blond ponytail, same horn-rim glasses, same lanky frame and broad grin with an almost imperceptible air of smugness to it. Clever, Shouta thought ruefully.

“Solo-Falcon Deliveries,” Shouta said tonelessly, offering the clipboard to sign.

“Right, right. So, didja end up finding who you were looking for?” Mockingbird--Yamada--whoever he was asked as he dug in his pocket for his stamp.

Shouta’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I might have.”

Yamada glanced over the clipboard at him and his cheerful expression sharpened just slightly. “Lucky you,” he said. “But more importantly lucky me,” he added, sinking back into breezy affability as he scooped up the box of equipment. “Papa needs a new podcasting setup!” He cuddled the box to his chest, rubbing his cheek against it affectionately. “Chii, I’ll be back doing teardown if anyone needs me,” he said before turning on his heel and ambling back the way he’d come.

Chiyaki watched him go, then turned back to Shouta. “I can take that,” they said, holding out a hand for the yellow carbon copy of the delivery sheet Yamada had abandoned on the clipboard. “Do you want some coffee or something?” they added.

Shouta shook his head, slowly unclenching from the full-body knot he’d stiffened into the moment Yamada had smirked at him. “No. Thanks anyway,” he said. He grabbed the handle of the dolly tightly to cover his shaking hands and turned it towards the door.

“Have a good one,” Chiyaki said.

“All available surface units, we’re getting reports of possible 4632 activity near the industrial docks.”

Shouta’s ears perked up at the code that crackled out over the police signal. A “4632” was the newly-instated code for an elusive villain he, the police, and every other hero and sidekick in the city had been attempting to track down for months now; one that would prove a vindicating apprehension if he could manage to pull it off without getting himself caught in the process. Shouta pulled his hood up and cut a shortcut through the city’s network of alleyways toward the docks, keeping his headset tuned to the police dispatch frequency for any updates.

He wasn’t sure if it was the police or the villain himself who had coined the nickname “Mockingbird” but once the media caught wind of it, it was there to stay regardless. From what Shouta had been able to glean from press releases, public record, and no small amount of poking his nose where it wasn’t technically supposed to be, the guy was bigger than some small-time crook but was careful enough that his established record never got long enough to get him branded as a supervillain. When he was caught in the act it was typically in the process of trying to take care of troublesome competition, going after white-collar bottom-feeders and other mid-range villains rather than heroes or the civilian population. He favored singular combat but if he got surrounded he always seemed to have some new trick to open a hole in the ranks big enough for him to squeeze through. Then he would lay low for however many days or weeks it took for the media to get bored of blowing him out of proportion and then he was right back at it with some new stunt. Tonight marked the end of Mockingbird’s longest absence since Shouta had started following his exploits. It had been nearly a month since the last sighting of him, and the rumor had been that either he’d been booked in a different precinct under his civilian name or he was dead. Shouta hadn’t believed either possibility was likely; if someone had found a way to trap a villain as infamous as Mockingbird, especially if the police had done it without heroic assistance, it would have been shouted from the rooftops from the moment his identity was confirmed.

The skepticism had been well-founded, it seemed, as he followed the APB updates through the industrial side of town. The docks were filled with regimented lines of identical rectangular flat-roofed warehouses with lots of obstructed eyelines and high ceilings; just the kind of place someone with a sound-manipulation Quirk like Mockingbird would have a clear advantage. The police had already cordoned off the area closest to the road and sidewalk, trying to keep gawking and interference to a minimum without giving away what was going on. Shouta casually strolled by the edge of the blockade, trying to estimate how many officers had already arrived with a quick glance out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t as many as they would probably need, but it was a big enough number that he was going to have to play this extremely carefully. When he was sure he’d walked far enough out of the way that no one was likely to see, Shouta climbed over the chainlink security fence that surrounded the warehouse complex. From what his radio was telling him Mockingbird had been sighted making his way through a specific row of warehouses on the far side of the docks, ducking into an upper window of one after climbing out of a skylight and jumping across the roof of another. Shouta crouch-ran from deep shadow to deep shadow, each fleeting moment in the hard blue-white of the LED security lights making his heart clench hard in his throat. He could do this, he reminded himself. He’d done the research, he knew his target, he’d trained himself up mentally and physically as much as he could bear. It might not have been right in anyone else’s mind but he at least knew this was his job to do.

Shouta heard a nearby door roll open and dropped down behind a pile of broken pallets. Through the cracked slats he could see a tall, thin figure sliding out through the slim gap that had opened up under the door and then closing it silently behind themself. He could hear police clearing the inside of the building, checking all the floors for the person that had just slipped out behind their backs. Mockingbird was leading them on a game of Follow The Leader, using police procedure to gain a bigger and bigger lead on his oblivious pursuers. Shouta wasn’t oblivious, however, and he was determined to keep Mockingbird in his sights now that he had him. As soon as he was sure the police were looking elsewhere Shouta left his hiding place and followed Mockingbird as he scampered into the next warehouse along. As he drew even with the building Shouta caught a glimpse of Mockingbird’s foot disappearing through a delivery window he had pried open and shimmied through. Mockingbird made a show of letting Shouta hear his retreating footsteps inside the building while conveniently forgetting to close the window behind him. Shouta frowned to himself, remembering the reports of Mockingbird purposefully thinning the herd so that he could pick people off one by one. The trap was obvious but ingenious, a “clumsy mistake” that left a blatant entry point that neither a cop nor a hero would be allowed to ignore. Shouta, however, was technically neither of those things.

Instead of taking the bait Shouta pressed himself against the wall of the warehouse and followed it around the corner until he came up on an employee-only entry door. The silent alarm on the doorframe was made slightly more silent by a quick snip of its power supply. Shouta knew that would start a ten-minute countdown between now and when the security company would call the police for a possible break-in, but he was hoping to have this wrapped up and in hand by then. He managed to jimmy open the spring lock on the door handle with an old credit card and the door popped open. Whatever the shipping company was paying their security staff to leave windows unlocked and doors with the deadbolts unbolted, it was way too much. Shouta closed and bolted the door behind himself and took a moment to get his bearings in the near-dark gloom. There was a few feet of glass and sheetrock between him and the warehouse proper that sectioned this area off as an employee entryway. Beyond that was a vast space full of shrink wrapped pallets of crates and tall metal shelving units full of cargo in various states of packaging. Shouta did his best to move silently across the entryway floor and out into the cargo area, sliding his feet over the concrete to avoid leaving footprints. The air in the main room had a heavy, low-clearance feeling to it despite the high rafters above him. Shouta stood still and waited for Mockingbird to make himself known among the various shadows and hiding places. He might have only had ten minutes to spare now, but with the police rapidly clearing the other warehouses around them Mockingbird would have a lot less than that.

“You’re quick, I’ll give you that.” The voice sounded like it came from directly behind him. Even though Shouta knew there was no way Mockingbird could have gotten the drop on him so quickly he only just resisted the urge to look away to check. Instead he narrowed his eyes into the darkness to catch any glimpse of movement. His Quirk wasn’t much help without a direct sighting but at least now he had confirmation that Mockingbird hadn’t gotten away just yet.

“I was kind of hoping I wouldn’t have to deal with people tonight, but it looks like that’s not going to happen, huh?” Mockingbird spoke with a languid, casual frustration in his tone that was more like someone who had to run to the store on their way home from work than a fleeing criminal. Shouta tried to follow the sound back to its source as it bounced from wall to wall faster than any human could move. So the sound manipulation was more than just volume, Shouta thought. The acoustics of the warehouse weren’t ideal but Mockingbird had enough control over his Quirk than he was able to make good use of what he had. Every footstep Mockingbird took sounded like it came from a hundred places on concrete and metal and wood all at the same time. Shouta took a deep breath to center himself. If he could just get a bead on Mockingbird it would be simple enough to even the playing field but it was impossible to do so from here with an army of obfuscating echoes kicking up new sounds all around him. He edged forward away from the wall, still careful to keep his own steps light and not leave a trail in the warehouse grit.

“Looks like your friends are finding a whole lot of nothing next door,” Mockingbird went on. “Too bad for them you’ve already grabbed the brass ring.”

If he could see the warehouse being cleared, Shouta thought, then he had to be somewhere higher than floor level now. There weren’t many windows in this place and the ones there were sat about ten feet off the ground. Shouta looked up, searching the top shelves of the storage racks. Every blink felt interminably long and the dry, dusty stillness made his eyes burn as he stared hard upwards. Finally he hit the mark: a dark human shape that sat perched on top of a cardboard crate on the top of one of the taller shelving units. Shouta allowed himself a small satisfied smirk as he tried to plan a way to get up there. Mockingbird would have the higher ground to get the drop on him if Shouta tried to just follow his path up. There was a three-foot gap between the nearest shelving unit and the one where Mockingbird perched watching his chaos play out, but if Shouta could time his jump and erasure well enough together he had a good chance at gaining the upper hand.

“You almost feel bad for them at this point,” Mockingbird said, a note of faux remorse in his surround-sound voice. Shouta wedged his feet into the side of the shelves, hefting himself hand-over-hand up to the top. He paused for a moment to get his balance. The units were bolted into the concrete floor below but they still felt uncomfortably spindly under weight that wasn’t stationary.

“Well, you might not, I guess. As long as you get the credit for the catch you probably don’t care much if you make them look like fools by blazing on you own way without them, do you?” Mockingbird mused, his head tilted idly to one side in thought. “And they’ll never call you on it, I know that for sure. You’ll get your fun little celebration and a medal and Nakamura will stand up in front of a crowd trying to resist the urge to garrote you with it while he gives a speech on your behalf.” He gave a short, almost bitter chuckle at the mental image.

Shouta had to crouch down and breathe hard with his head between his knees to regain his equilibrium. The closer he got to the epicenter of the sound the faster it seemed to change direction around him. The rapid-fire changes made the already-unstable shelving feel like it was trying to buck him off as he inched closer and closer to the edge.

“‘Today we honor a brave and valiant resource within our community and within the profession of peace-keeping. Truly, without the hard work of dedicated heroes and sidekicks such as you we would be at a clear disadvantage in the modern social climate and city structure.’”

Mockingbird’s posture straightened and stiffened as he spoke in an unnervingly pitch-perfect imitation of Police Chief Nakamura’s pompous-but-expressionless public speaking voice. It seemed like he couldn’t trigger the disorienting effect and do the impression at the same time, however; almost as soon as he began speaking Shouta’s head cleared and the creeping nausea knocking him off balance dissipated. Seizing the opportunity, Shouta broke into a run toward the edge of the shelves. Just as Mockingbird slumped back into his sardonic posture Shouta took the moment of silence to activate his own Quirk. The petulant, eye-rolling sigh Mockingbird let out echoed small and quiet around the building’s walls. He jolted to attention, one hand clapped to his throat as he looked around for a cause. Shouta sprang across the gap at that moment, one hand reaching into the hidden pocket in his waistband for his homemade bolas. Mockingbird let out a sharp yelp as he saw Shouta and half-scrambled, half-fell off of the crate. He tried to scurry down the shelves to get away but Shouta followed at his heels, eyes focused and unblinking. Shouta spun the bolas in one hand as he ran, building up speed until the weights on the ends began to sing through the air before letting it go with a snap of his wrist. He knew by the way Mockingbird went suddenly stiff and staggered half a step before keeling over forward that his aim had been true. Careful to not take his eyes off of Mockingbird’s prone, struggling form, Shouta slowed to approach with caution. The bolas had hit a little lower than he had intended, pinning Mockingbird’s forearms bent against his sides, but the nylon rope held fast even with his wild squirming.

“Holy shit you’re fast!” Mockingbird was laughing breathlessly as Shouta reached down and pulled him into a sitting position by the collar of his jacket. He could see now that the jacket’s sleeves were fringed by offset rows of tooled leather feathers and the black half-mask poking out of the hood of the sweatshirt Mockingbird wore underneath had a short, sharp beak. If he hadn’t been such a thorn in so many sides Shouta almost could have given Mockingbird credit for adhering so closely to his gimmick.

“So what do they call you, fast boy?” Mockingbird asked, grinning with a galling amount of disaffected casualness up at him.

Shouta ignored him, mind already turning to how he was going to move forward. There wasn’t much time left until the police would be investigating the open delivery window and making their way inside, which was good, but the last thing he needed right now was to have the best capture of his career marred by getting taken into custody right next to Mockingbird. On the other hand, abandoning Mockingbird to his own devices in the time between now and the arrival of the authorities didn’t hold much of a shine either; there was no way that Mockingbird would just sit tight and wait to be hauled away while Shouta ducked out of sight. He wished he’d thought to bring more loose cord, or at the very least something he could use to make Mockingbird stop prattling.

“Not one for introductions? Color me impressed. Usually you hero types like to announce your name far and wide to anyone who will listen if it means a shiny new brand deal in your future,” Mockingbird said with faux deference. Shouta snorted in spite of himself, only half-listening. Mockingbird paused, head cocked to one side and the corner of his mouth curling into a crooked grin. “C’mon,” he said wheedlingly. “He’s quick, he’s smart, he’s got a killer Quirk. There’s got to be a name to complete the picture.”

“Not one you need to know,” Shouta replied coolly. He regretted it instantly as Mockingbird perked up.

“He speaks! Well, well. I can see why they keep you around, at any rate. Most of the heroes I come across don’t have enough imagination to fill a thimble, I would have gotten them with the old window trick,” Mockingbird said. “You, on the other hand, seem to have thought of everything. Well,” he amended, mouth twisting in a considering moue. There was a decisive shnk sound from behind him and he held up the cut end of Shouta’s bolas in one hand and a small silver ring with a blade concealed in it in the other. “Maybe not everything.”

Before Shouta could react, Mockingbird kicked out with both feet and disappeared behind a wall of dust. Shouta threw up an arm to protect himself but it didn’t do much to block the huge waft of grit that hit him in the face. He swore under his breath as he tried to wave it away and get sight of where Mockingbird had run to now. Without Shouta erasing his Quirk Mockingbird was back to making it sound like he was everywhere at once, footsteps and infuriating laughter coming at Shouta from all sides. Shouta paused between rows of shelves and closed his eyes, trying to work out Mockingbird’s position by sound. It would make sense for him to bounce the sound from every direction but the one he was actually trying to escape in and lead Shouta on a dozen wild goose chases. And despite the echoes of echoes of echoes, the one place the sound deadened rather than amplified was off to Shouta’s left and up a few rows. Shouta took off at a sprint, opting for speed over stealth at this point.

He regretted the choice as he turned the corner to where he thought the Mockingbird had gone. Before he had a chance to react an arm punched out into the air in front of him at chest height. Shouta ran full speed into it, catching the balled fist hard in the ribs and feeling it empty his lungs with a sickening snap. A second fist came at him from behind, slamming down hard on the base of his skull and dropping him to his knees. Mockingbird twisted his arm up behind him, just hard enough to hurt, and put his knee in the small of Shouta’s back to hold him down. Shouta writhed and struggled to free himself despite the flair of pain as he did so.

“Eh-eh-eh, hero, that’s gonna hurt you more than it’ll hurt me,” Mockingbird chided calmly. “I felt that rib snap, don’t act like you’re getting up to brawl any time soon. What kind of bargain-basement kit are they handing out these days that you don’t even have body armor? Is your agency just that broke? Or. Oh. Oh wait a second.” He broke off with a sharp bark of laughter as Shouta’s situation seemed to click in his head. “That’s very interesting.” Shouta gritted his teeth and tried again to throw Mockingbird off of himself but Mockingbird was right; too much moving set his chest on fire and made breathing even harder than it already was with someone sitting on him. “Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t really have time to wait around and see which one of us gets in more trouble for all this,” Mockingbird went on in a sarcastic mimicry of Shouta’s own voice. “The cops will be sad to know they missed me, but I think you’ll make a good consolation prize.”

With that he let go of Shouta’s wrist. A split second later both of his hands came down on either side of Shouta’s head in a hard thunderclap against his ears. Shouta couldn’t hold back the shout of pain that sounded thin and hollow compared to the shrill electric whine that had overtaken his hearing. Mockingbird stood up and took off at a sprint toward the door. Shouta struggled to stand, every motion sending his head spinning again. He hobbled out as quickly as he dared, reaching the kicked-open back entrance just as he heard the police breaching the front. True stealth seemed like an unreachable goal right now, so Shouta decided to just aim for not getting caught instead. The cold night air did wonders to clear his head despite the way it made his chest ache and by the time he reached the street again he could mostly walk upright again. It wasn’t hard to remind himself of the dangers of the job when everything had seemed so close to coming apart at the seams. He’d know better going forward, he told himself as he limped home. A difficult fight meant better intel, and better intel meant fewer surprises next time. It didn’t unbreak his rib or unbruise his pride but it was a softer place to land at least.

Shouta made it as far as his entryway floor before he let himself lay down with a low groan. As carefully as he could be around his injuries he kicked off his shoes and stripped off his jumpsuit. He’d just rest here for a moment, then he’d get back up and crash on his couch like a normal person, Shouta told himself, knowing full well he was probably lying even as he thought it.

A sharp, businesslike knock on his door shook Shouta awake. He opened his eyes to see that he was still spread-eagle in his entryway with the midmorning sun creeping in from behind his curtains. Shouta groaned as the knock came again. The disorienting ringing in his head from the night before had metamorphosized into a crackling migraine that repaid every motion with a hot spiderweb of pain across his skull. There was a sound like something heavy and soft being dropped outside his door and footsteps walking away as whoever it was got frustrated and left. Shouta sat up in slow stages, cradling his head with one hand and using the other to brace himself upright. Standing up involved a lot of clinging to the wall and very sternly telling himself not to be sick. At long last he managed to make it to the door and open it.

A large brown envelope had been left on his doormat. There was no return address on it and the only indication that it was meant for him was his apartment number scrawled across the front without a name or street number. Shouta arched an eyebrow, turning it over in his hands. The envelope wasn’t even sealed, and the flap popped open from where it had been tucked inside as he moved it. He shook out the contents, intrigued and filled with dread in equal measure.

A thick black stab-proof vest had been folded in half and crammed into the envelope. Shouta stared at it, blinking blankly. It felt hefty and sturdy in his hands and all of the places where official badges and branding tags should have been had been painstakingly picked away, leaving slightly darker patches behind. Stuck to the front was a yellow sticky note that read “Thank me later” in thin, loopy handwriting. It was signed with a scrawled double arch that could have been a flattened “M” or possibly a stylized bird.

Shouta felt a chill race up his spine. All pain momentarily forgotten, he dropped the envelope and vest and sprinted out into the hallway to the stairwell. He couldn’t hear anyone else making their way downstairs, but his building’s elevator had been broken for months so there was no other way they could have gone. He took the stairs two at a time, hoping he hadn’t wasted too much time getting up. He all but exploded out the building’s front door, head whipping from side to side as he looked at the people passing by on the sidewalk. No one seemed to be hurrying more than normal for this time of the morning, no one was frantically trying to act natural or make an escape through the crowd. Shouta gritted his teeth, cursing his response time. If he’d gotten himself up faster he could have at least known which way Mockingbird had gone.

As he desperately tried to gain back some of his lost ground Shouta caught sight of a tall, lanky man with a long blond ponytail and glasses idling at the nearby bus stop. The man was watching him out of the corner of his eye, one thin eyebrow raised. He gave Shouta a tight, awkward, “oh crap I just made eye contact with the person I was staring at” smile as their eyes met and quickly turned away like he hadn’t been looking. Shouta strode up to him, determined not to lose a potential witness to something as worthless as social decorum. The man grimaced and removed his headphones as Shouta approached. Shouta could hear bass-heavy EDM blaring out at an uncomfortable volume even from a few feet away.

“Er. Can I help you?” the man asked. He’d plastered on a smile again, seeming to not want to be rude.

“How long have you been standing here?” Shouta asked. The man blinked as if taken aback by the question.

“Five...ten minutes maybe? I missed the last bus, so however long since that,” he said, checking the time on his phone.

“Did you see anyone else come out of that building?” Shouta asked, pointing behind him. “They were probably walking pretty fast, like they were trying to get away quickly? I need to know which way they went.”

The man shook his head, eyebrow arched in bewilderment again. “No, sorry,” he said. “I mean, I wasn’t looking, I was trying to watch for my bus, but I don’t think so, no.” His smile turned a little less waxy and more concerned. “Are you okay, dude? You seem kind of…” He gestured vaguely, encompassing Shouta’s current mussed-hair-and-underclothes situation. “Stressed,” he finished. Shouta scowled, face heating.

“‘M fine,” he muttered. “Thanks anyway.”

“Sure thing,” the man shrugged. He took one last look at Shouta, shrugged again, and pulled his headphones back over his ears.

“Shou, c’mon, you’re missing it!” Shirakumo exclaimed, jostling Shouta’s shoulder for attention. Shouta shot out a hand to grab his Arithmancy book before it slid off his knee and glanced up to see what the fuss was about. He had mostly mastered the art of doing homework in the stands during Quidditch matches but sometimes even six years of practice was no match for his friend’s exuberance.

It was a semi-finals match between Slytherin and Hufflepuff and both teams were playing for blood. So many fouls had been called on both sides that the game was an hour in and had only just gotten into the second quarter. Shouta wasn’t entirely immune to the house pride of seeing Hufflepuff up by twenty points, but the feeling was somewhat tempered by seeing two thirds of the team’s Chasers and half of the two-man Beater line streaking off to start a midair fistfight with Slytherin’s Beaters. The only two players that seemed immune to the cutthroat drama were the teams’ respective Seekers, keeping their distance at opposite ends of the pitch in careful pursuit of the Snitch.

“You should throw him your handkerchief,” Shirakumo teased, nodding to where the Slytherin Seeker Hizashi Yamada was hovering near their seats. Shouta shot him a withering look that just made Shirakumo grin all the wider at him. His crush was an open secret between the two of them and Shirakumo mostly showed his support by trying to convince Shouta that all he had to do was make the first move and the rest would fall into place after that. Shouta couldn’t help thinking Yamada looked uncharacteristically stately now with the sun lighting his blond hair like a candle flame and his face sharp and attentive. Normally Yamada was as boisterous and carefree as Shirakumo, but Quidditch brought out a more calculating, straightforward side of him that made it obvious why he’d been sorted into Slytherin. Shouta felt his face heating and tried to go back to his schoolwork despite Yamada making it infinitely harder to concentrate on the numerology in his lap. 

A darting movement across the pitch behind Yamada’s head caught Shouta’s eye. With three of the four Beaters wrapped up in the fight the Bludgers were barrelling around the pitch without restraint. One of them seemed dedicated to hassling the Hufflepuff Keeper but the other had taken a sharp boomerang turn around the goal hoops and was pelting full speed directly for Yamada’s head. Everything seemed to slow as the breath caught in Shouta’s chest and a panicked buzz rose in his ears. Even if the Slytherin captain Kayama managed to break up the fight in time, there would be no way for anyone to beat the Bludger to Yamada. Yamada could avoid it by dropping down out of its path, but he was so focused on scanning the sky for any hint of the Snitch that anything else happening seemed to be boxed off outside of his attention.

“Oh shit.” Shirakumo sucked in a hard breath as his mental math synced with Shouta’s. “Oi! Yama--wait, what-?” He cut himself off as Shouta shoved his schoolwork and wand into Shirakumo’s lap. Some absurd impulse grabbed Shouta by the gut and dragged him out of his seat before he had time to think better of following it. He vaulted the two rows of seats between him and the edge of the stands and threw himself headlong at the handle of Yamada’s broom.

A lot of things went very right and very wrong all at once. Shouta managed to grab ahold of the broom with both hands. His sudden added weight caused the broom to jolt straight down two feet; the Bludger whiffed past just above Yamada’s head, clipping the corner of a nearby staff tower before changing direction to go menace someone else. Shouta had a split second to take in Yamada’s expression of dazed realization before the combination of his own momentum and a numbing snap deep in his left shoulder ripped his hands off the broom. He made a grasping flail at catching himself but his fingertips grazed uselessly off the polished wood. 

Shouta tried not to think about how fast he would be going when he hit the ground but the words “smash” and “crunch” and “splatter” kept jostling around in his brain without permission. It would be his luck to end up dead in a crater the moment he finally worked up the guts to get close to Yamada, Shouta thought bleakly. He still wasn’t too far away from Yamada now, a fact that only clicked into his scrambled mind after a few bewildered misfires. Yamada’s face had gone from wide-eyed horror to razor focus as he dove straight down towards Shouta. Yamada leaned out as far as he could over the handle of his broom and caught Shouta by the forearm, pulling them both out of the dive barely above the ground. The two of them overbalanced together and toppled the last two feet onto the grass. They bounced with a hard smack and rolled apart as the inopportune landing finally ended.

Shouta lay dazed in the grass as the sky spun above him. His left shoulder felt loose in his skin, full of throbbing cold-hot fire. Yamada, pale and sweaty and grass-stained, knelt next to him. Shouta thought he might be asking if Shouta was okay but his voice was drowned out in the uproar of the crowd and the dissonant, disoriented ringing in Shouta’s head. He struggled to sit up and assure Yamada that he was fine, just winded. As soon as he was upright, though, the world pitched violently upside down and Shouta had to turn away to avoid being sick all over Yamada. Yamada patted his back awkwardly as Shouta crumpled onto elbows and knees and heaved into the grass. Somewhere far away Shouta could hear a whistle being blown and Yamada shouting for a time out and for someone to get a medic to help him.

Shouta had dislocated his shoulder in the jump and the semi-crash landing had gifted him the added bonus of a “monster concussion”, in the words of Miss Chiyo. She clicked her tongue at the state of him and gave him a cheerfully disapproving lecture about avoidable danger as she patched him up and helped him into a stabilizing sling. Shouta couldn’t help thinking she had more of an inkling of his actual motivations than she let on when she finished by handing him a chocolate frog and ruffling his hair as he got up to leave.

Yamada and Kayama were having a quiet bickering debate a short way down the corridor as Shouta came out of the hospital wing. He felt his cheeks going red again as Yamada’s face lit up at the sight of him. Shirakumo came to his rescue by hustling up from the other end of the corridor, already giving him an earful to rival Miss Chiyo’s. Shouta gratefully overlooked the irony of being lectured on recklessness by a Gryffindor, pulling his hood up over his head and letting Shirakumo lay into him all the way back to the Hufflepuff common room.

Shouta mostly managed to avoid interacting with Yamada for the next few days despite Yamada doing everything he could to put himself in Shouta’s path. Under any other circumstances it would have been unexpected but encouraging to suddenly have Yamada’s attention to completely. Every time their eyes met, however, all Shouta could think about was how Yamada had seen him dramatically throw himself out of the stadium stands, dramatically almost plummet to his death, and then dramatically hurl all over a sports field. The self-inflicted humiliation of the whole mess made him want to bury himself in the cabbage patch behind the greenhouses and never be seen again. It didn’t help that everyone else seemed equally interested in his business now. One moment of impulsiveness had turned him into a minor celebrity around the student body and he couldn’t so much as walk down a corridor without a flood of whispers following his every step. Shirakumo had stepped up to help as much as he could. He met Shouta after every class and help him carry his books while his dominant arm was out of commission, doing his best to talk over the rumor mill and run interference when anyone got too chatty. Shouta appreciated his mostly judgement-free support beyond words.

No plan was ever perfect, however, and Shirakumo was a no-show to meet him after a very trying Transfiguration class. After ten minutes of hovering in the doorway Shouta’s back was aching from the overload to his right side and he decided to cut his losses and make his way back to the common room on his own. He sighed and started to shuffle down the hallway, figuring he’d probably meet Shirakumo halfway.

“Here, need some help?” A pair of hands reached out and took his stack of books before he could answer. Shouta turned to tell whoever it was that he was managing just fine and came face-to-face with Yamada. Yamada gave him an awkward crooked grin and tucked Shouta’s books under his arm along with his own. Shouta felt a hot blush streak up his cheeks and all the way to the tops of his ears and looked away before Yamada could see it.

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

“That’s my line, dude,” Yamada said with a laugh. “That was a crazy move you pulled. I mean, that Bludger was gonna take my head straight off and you were just like, ‘not today, asshole! Nyoom!’” He mimed diving forward, unburdened arm stretched out in front of him. “I get pretty bad tunnel vision when I’m out on the pitch, I never even saw it coming,” Yamada admitted with a slightly guilty laugh. “You did, though, that was amazing!”

The heat in Shouta’s face cranked up another ten degrees. He was saved the need to think of a lucid reply as Shirakumo came running up to meet them looking frazzled. “Sorry, Shou, Tensei wanted to talk about our match next weekend and I couldn’t get him to stop,” Shirakumo panted. He brightened slightly as he realized Shouta wasn’t alone. “Oh, hey! Yamada, right?” he said, doing a reasonably good impression of someone who didn’t deal with his best friend’s unruly crush on Yamada on a daily basis. “Killer save last weekend, man, that match was nuts!”

“Thanks, but I think that honor belongs to Aizawa over here, if I’m being honest,” Yamada replied. Shouta was embarrassed by the pleasant frisson that went up his spine at the sound of Yamada saying his name.

“It was no big deal,” Shouta muttered, shaking his head. Yamada gaped at him, jaw hanging open mid-disbelieving scoff.

“Are you kidding me?” he exclaimed loudly enough to make several people stare as they passed. “It was totally badass!”

Shirakumo badly hid a snicker behind clearing his throat. Shouta shot him a capital-L Look that he took in stride. “It looks like Yamada’s got you handled this time, so I’ll catch you later, Shou,” he said, patting Shouta’s uninjured shoulder. He peeled off with a meaningful grin before Shouta could protest, presumably jogging off to resume his conversation with Tensei Iida. Shouta tried not to look annoyed with the circumstances as he and Yamada set off again. A tense silence started to form between them, but Yamada broke it before it got too thick.

“So, uh. Are you going on the Hogsmeade trip this weekend?” Yamada asked.

“No, probably not,” Shouta replied. “It’s easier to get a good table in the library when everyone else is gone.”

“Oh.” The disappointment in Yamada’s tone made Shouta immediately regret being so quick to answer.

“Are you?” Shouta asked awkwardly. 

“Yeah, most likely,” Yamada said. “I usually go, it’s nice to get out and stretch my legs somewhere that isn’t class or practice or anything here, y’know?” He paused, then went on, “I thought maybe if we both were going I could maybe buy you lunch at the Three Broomsticks or something as a thank you for saving my skin.” He finished with another, slightly more tense chuckle.

“Oh. Okay, sure,” Shouta said, hoping his immediate change of heart didn’t come across as too eager. If Yamada noticed he didn’t mind, as he instantly brightened at Shouta’s agreement.

“Yeah?”

Shouta nodded. “I think Shirakumo’s free too unless Iida pulls him in for extra practice. We can all go,” he said.

“Oh. I mean, sure, I guess, but. I was actually meaning just us. Like, the two of us? I-If you wanted to, I mean. I don’t want to mess up your schedule or anything if you need to study, it’s fine,” Yamada rambled. He’d gone nearly as red as Shouta now, reflexively raking his free hand through his hair.

“No!” Shouta blurted, louder than he’d intended. “I mean. No, yeah, that--that sounds great,” he said, the breathless, giddy hitch in his chest making him chatter in spite of himself.

“Yeah?” Yamada’s face split into a huge, brilliant grin that Shouta couldn’t help but return as he nodded.

“Yeah. I-I’d like that,” he said.

“Cool! Cool, that’s, that’s great, cool,” Yamada said. A shrill beeping rang out, making both of them jump. Yamada swore and pulled up his sleeve to turn off the alarm on his watch. “Crap! I totally forgot, I’ve gotta go make up a Charms exam. Torino’s going to murder me if I’m late again,” he groaned with an apologetic grimace. “Sorry, I gotta run.”

“Don’t worry about it, I was just going to the library anyway,” Shouta fibbed, nodding towards the open double doors a few yards away. He held out his arm to awkwardly reclaim his books from Yamada. “Thanks for your help.”

“Anytime,” Yamada nodded. “So...meet you in the courtyard on Saturday?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Shouta agreed, just barely holding back from saying “it’s a date”.

Hizashi kept trying to share his umbrella as they walked home from school, half-jogging to stay in step with Shouta even as he tried to sidle out from under it. Shouta walked directly through some deep puddles to shake him but Hizashi kept pace with him, grimacing as his shoes flooded and the rainwater wicked up his pant legs to the knee. Shouta gritted his teeth in a flash of white-hot annoyance. He stalked away from Hizashi on the last few seconds of a crossing signal, stranding him and his stupid umbrella on the other side of the street. Even that only gained him a few moments alone in the downpour. Practically right on his heels he heard Hizashi shouting apologies to drivers as he scurried through traffic to catch up; a moment later the umbrella had returned. Shouta took a sharp left down a side street, shoving past Hizashi as he did. Hizashi took a moment to recover but soon enough he was back at Shouta’s side.

Shouta felt the last brittle strands on his patience snap like an overtuned piano wire in his chest. If there was one person he’d counted on to understand where he was right now, it was Hizashi. Shouta didn’t want people to be soft and wary and kind to him; he didn’t want to be coddled and kept warm and dry. He wanted to storm and stalk and bulldoze his way through the rain until he looked as bad on the outside as he felt on the inside. He wanted to shove it into everyone’s performative, platitude-spewing faces and make them see that things were stupid and bad and would be that way forever because of him, no matter how much they patted him on the head and told him things would turn around eventually. He wheeled on Hizashi, hands balled into fists. Before Hizashi could react, Shouta snatched the umbrella from him, closed it, and shoved it hard into his chest. Hizashi stared at him, mouth hanging open in shock, but Shouta was already blazing past him back towards the main street. 

“I lost him too you know!” The sudden whipcrack of Hizashi’s voice made Shouta stop short. He turned to see Hizashi still standing where he’d left him, head down and hands shaking as he gripped his umbrella in white-knuckle fists.

“I decided I was okay with always being your second choice a long time ago, because at least then I was still a choice,” Hizashi went on. His voice was choked and raw in a way Shouta had never heard from him before. “But now you’re too busy being an asshole to even notice I exist!” Hizashi stormed over as he spoke, his voice climbing to a furious bark. “You just mope around with your head up your ass, leaving me behind like you don’t even care!” He punctuated his words by shoving Shouta in the chest again and again, sending him stumbling back a step each time. Shouta smirked bitterly. It sounded like Hizashi was finally realizing the trash he’d spent so long trying to elevate was just holding him back. Good for him. He turned away, ready to leave Hizashi to follow the thought through to the inevitable conclusion of Shouta’s worthlessness. Hizashi grabbed him hard by the jacket lapels, shaking him sharply and screaming, “Look at me!”

Shouta was so startled by the jolt that he did. At first he just felt confused by what he saw. Hizashi’s face was flushed and blotchy, the dark hollowness of his eyes made all the more obvious by the tears streaming down his face. Hizashi was genuinely, blazingly angry; worse still, he was crying. None of this made any sense. Hizashi didn’t get mad; he got salty and caustic and hilariously petty but he never seemed to have it in him to get mad. Likewise he might squeeze out a few tears for a cute baby animal video or when something especially sappy happened in a Disney movie, but never in choked, breathless sobs like this. Shouta stared, frozen, while his numb brain scrambled for a reaction.

The fight seemed to go out of Hizashi as their eyes finally met. He slumped forward onto Shouta’s neck, fists still gripping his jacket so hard Shouta could feel every knuckle straining. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t do this by myself. Please. I need you, Shouta, please…”

This was wrong. No one needed him, he was the reason everything fell apart. No one should think the person who broke them this badly would be the one to fix things again. Shouta didn’t think he could fix anything now. Even so, some part of him wanted to try if it meant Hizashi wouldn’t hurt like this anymore. Slowly Shouta lifted his arms and wrapped them around Hizashi’s shoulders. Hizashi’s arms snapped tight around his ribs, fingers digging into his back so hard it was almost painful. Shouta shut his eyes tight, squeezing Hizashi just as hard as he took what felt like his first full breath in weeks.

They went to Hizashi’s apartment because it was closer and the rain was coming down harder than ever. Hizashi’s mother didn’t ask why the two of them showed by raw-eyed and soaked to the skin. Instead she just ushered them both into warm baths and dry clothes in an affectionately exasperated tone that brooked no argument. Shouta went first, drifting in the hot water until the prickling feeling on his skin stopped. Everything that had been moving double-time seemed to have boomeranged around to a snail’s pace instead. Being angry had at least felt like he’d been doing something, even if it had mostly just been burning his life down and salting the earth behind him. Now his warpath had been brought to a screeching halt and the sludgy inertia of sadness was biting at his heels.

When he emerged Hizashi’s mother descended on him almost immediately with still more practical comforts. She tucked a large knitted blanket around his shoulders before wrapping him in a hug almost as bone-crushing as her son’s and kissing the top of his head. It felt pleasantly suffocating as she squeezed him so tightly he felt his back pop; what felt even better was the way she just pushed a mug of very strong tea with too much milk and honey into his hands and sat him down on the couch without any of the thousand iterations of commiserating with his pain he’d grown so rabidly sick of. She repeated the ritual with Hizashi when he came out of the bathroom, telling them she would be working on emails in her room if they needed her before leaving them alone.

Hizashi dumped himself awkwardly onto the other end of the couch from Shouta. The distance between them felt immeasurable and alien. Shouta glanced at Hizashi out of the corner of his eye. The other boy was staring down into his tea without seeing it, wet hair sticking to his forehead and the back of his neck. He looked as lost and broken and small as Shouta felt now. A sharp squirm of guilt dug its way into the pit of Shouta’s stomach and begged him to just leave before he made things worse. He took a deep breath and stood his ground against himself.

“I’m sorry, Hizashi,” Shouta said quietly. He saw Hizashi flinch in his peripheral vision, hands flexing around his mug.

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Hizashi replied with a forced chuckle that sounded more like he was trying not to throw up. “I know you’re going through...stuff. I, uh. Got kind of vicious back there. Sorry.”

“You were right, though,” Shouta said. “I’ve been too caught up in myself to pay attention to anyone else. That’s not fair. I’m sorry.” He frowned, trying to think of a good way to phrase the rest. “What you said before, about always being my second choice,” he began.

“We don’t have to get into that,” Hizashi jumped in quickly. “I-I was just mad, saying shit.” He bit his lip, shaking his head. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It obviously is,” Shouta said, a little more sharply than he’d really meant it. This seemed so patently Hizashi, playing off his feelings to keep things from getting too serious. Shouta wondered how long this had been boiling below the surface. “Even if it isn’t,” he said, starting again, “maybe it should be?” Hizashi looked over at him, surprised. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that. I always thought it was all three of us in it together. Equally. I’m sorry I made you feel like that wasn’t true.” Shouta sighed, shaking his head. “I didn’t realize how messed up things were already. Too far up my own ass I guess.”

To his surprise Hizashi snorted out a weak laugh at that. He breached the unspoken divide between them, scooting over to lean just a little bit too much into Shouta’s personal space. It was normal for him, but normal felt like a miracle right now. “Don’t beat yourself up too much,” Hizashi said, elbowing him gently in the side. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t spend half your life stuck in your own head.”

Shouta rolled his eyes but deep down he felt comforted by the backhanded compliment. “Can I tell you something stupid?” he asked.

“Always.”

“Honestly, I. I always kind of thought I was the one who didn’t fit,” Shouta admitted quietly. “I’m just okay at school, and I’m not good with people or with my Quirk yet like you and--like the two of you are,” he said. He corrected himself before he said the name out loud; just the thought of it still felt like swallowing broken glass. He shook his head. “How the hell did we manage to have two black sheep in a group of three people?” he wondered dryly.

Hizashi barked out a sharp but genuine laugh. “And somehow it’s us oddballs who are left,” he agreed. “Figure that one out.” He gave a theatrical broad shrug, then slumped back down onto the couch. The moment of levity seemed to hang in brittle shards around them. It felt wrong to be joking around, but it felt worse being sad. Shouta leaned into Hizashi’s side, resting his head on Hizashi’s shoulder.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” he admitted in a shaky whisper.

“Me neither,” Hizashi murmured. “Guess we have to figure it out on our own.”

Shouta felt a warm trepidation at the word “we”. “Are you sure you still want to saddle yourself with me?” he asked.

Hizashi snorted, his mouth quirking into a ghost of his usual broad grin.“Uh, duh. You’re never getting rid of me now.”

“Promise?” The question felt childish and Shouta immediately regretted letting it slip out. Hizashi took his hand, threading their fingers together and squeezing tight.